rambo lynch running for president?????????

Private Jessica says President is misusing her 'heroism'

Edward Helmore, New York
Sunday November 9, 2003
The Observer

When American Private Jessica Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital last
April, President George Bush's administration and much of the US media was
gripped by a dramatic tale of blonde, all-American heroism.
The story reaches fever pitch this week with the publication of Lynch's
autobiography, a dramatised TV documentary, interviews and a Vanity Fair
cover story.

Beneath the gloss of the US media and the machinations of an administration
eager to show a 'good news' angle of the Iraq conflict against the reality
of a rising body count, Lynch has become a metaphor not for the heroism of
pretty young Americans captured by a devilish foreign enemy, but for the
confusion that has marked Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom from the start.

Misgivings characterising Lynch's story are coming to a head: last week she
accused the administration of manipulating her story for propaganda, saying
she was not a heroine at all; accusations that she'd been raped were
disputed by appalled Iraqi doctors who first treated her, and the army was
accused of insensitivity and racism for awarding Lynch a full disability
pension while others from her ambushed maintenance company, including
Shoshana Johnson, the black cook wounded and captured by Iraqis, will
receive barely a third of Lynch's discharge package.

While Johnson is living on $500 a month, Lynch stands to make millions from
her book, I Am a Soldier, Too. She has been romanced as the media target of
the moment, photographed by Annie Liebowitz for Vanity Fair, and stands to
make millions more from a movie deal.

'There is a double standard,' said Johnson's father, Claude. 'I don't know
for sure that it was the Pentagon. All I know for sure is the media paid a
lot of attention to Jessica.'

And America is deter mined that Lynch will be a heroine, despite the fact
that she never fired a shot, and instead got down on her knees to pray as
her unit was surrounded by enemy forces. As she pointed out herself, it was
her dead colleague Lori Piestewa, a Native American mother of two, who went
down fighting.

Lynch says the circumstances of her rescue was dramatised and manipulated by
the Pentagon. She was not rescued in a 'blaze of gunfire' as reported by
Defence Department officials last April, but picked up from compliant Iraq
doctors who had saved her life.

She was not raped, as the department said, and the Iraqi, Mohammed Odeh
Al-Rehaief, who was given US citizenship for his efforts, has written a book
about how he risked his own life to win her freedom. Now he is described by
his wife as overly influenced by John Wayne movies.

'Lynch is basically saying the whole thing was made up, a fraud,' said media
critic Michael Wolff. 'At the same time, the media is going on with this
elaborate production effort to make her into a hero. It's as if the size of
the attention itself makes her a hero. Everyone is committed to making her
the face of the war whereas the other story that this all a kind of
scandal.'

But the story may be too far along to reverse. 'She can't take back being a
star. The fact that she says it's all made up doesn't make a difference.
It's been decided she's a star, and that's the only indisputable fact,' said
Wolff.

The New York Times has pointed out how Lynch has become the Mona Lisa of
Operation Iraqi Freedom. Americans have been able to read into her
unrevealing snapshot whatever story they chose. Her story becoming 'a
Rorschach test for homefront mood swings'.

Now, with the US forces having lost 32 soldiers in the last week alone, the
mood may be turning and she stands to be come symbolic of US confusion and
press credulity. The inconsistencies have not been missed by veterans'
groups who don't wish to besmirch her individual valour but are uneasy over
the administration's efforts to present 'good news' while ignoring the
reality.

'The White House sent a message that they were going to tell the good news
stories so now we have a situation where we are not allowed to witness the
coffins coming home and there are no images of young soldiers coming home
missing arms and legs,' said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War
Resource Centre.

'We're just seeing one side of the story, and you've got to tell the other
side, the one about the wounded, maimed and the dead.' There is growing
doubt Lynch's uplifting story will help to sweeten the nation's mood about
the dim prospect that the US will be able extricate itself from Iraq before
hundreds, and possibly thousands, more servicemen died.

Lynch, who joined the army hoping to see the world after failing to land a
job at a supermarket, is preparing to go on a media tour that will include
appearances with TV anchors such as David Letterman. Yet she is unable to
fulfil the role of the patriot.

The administration's game plan, enabled by a supplicant media, is showing
signs of distress. The singer Cher recently visited the hospital where Lynch
recovered from her ordeal and talked on TV of meeting a teenage soldier who
had lost both his arms.

She wanted to know why Bush and his team weren't there having their
photographs taken with the injured troops. 'I don't understand why these
guys [the wounded] are so hidden and there aren't pictures of them,' Cher
said.

Lynch now questions why her rescue was filmed: 'They used me to symbolise
all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say
these things.'