Offshoreonly.com - Jessica Lynch rescue staged?

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WASHINGTON (May 23) - Defense officials said on Friday the Pentagon was insulted by media claims the rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq was hyped to boost support for the war as questions swirled over the private's capture, her rescue and injuries.

The U.S. Army has launched an investigation into the capture of Lynch and others on March 23 in Iraq and an Army spokesman said the military's Criminal Investigation Unit was also looking at the treatment of Lynch and other U.S. prisoners of war in Iraq to establish if any war crimes were committed.

Lynch's rescue on April 1 from an Iraqi hospital by U.S. forces was billed a daring, heroic act in which brave special operations troops stormed into a hospital in the dead of night to rescue a fallen comrade. It also made the 20-year-old Lynch, of Palestine, West Virginia, a hero and symbol of patriotic pride.

But a British Broadcasting Corp. documentary concluded after interviewing Iraqis that the rescue was a Hollywood-style stunt designed to boost patriotism at a difficult time in the war.

Pentagon spokesman Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said it was ''ludicrous and insulting'' for the BBC to suggest the rescue was staged and hyped up.

''The thing that is most insulting is the suggestion that we would put U.S. service members at risk to stage such an event. This was a real rescue under a combat situation,'' Lapan told Reuters. ''In addition, the war was not going badly.''

The BBC report portrayed a rescue in which there was little danger to the soldiers and quoted a local doctor as saying troops fired blank rounds to ''make a show.'' The report said the U.S. military knew before going in there were no Iraqi forces guarding the hospital.

Lapan said there were firefights outside the hospital with ''irregular Iraqi forces'' and to suggest blanks were used was silly.

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Lynch, an Army supply clerk, was captured on March 23 when her 507th Maintenance Company convoy was ambushed after taking a wrong turn near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya. Nine other U.S. soldiers were killed in the attack.

News reports since Lynch was rescued have varied, from claims Lynch was slapped around in the hospital to reports sympathetic Iraqis risked their lives by driving her to a U.S. checkpoint only to be turned away.

Lapan said the military had not been able to confirm reports Lynch was turned away but said this was unlikely.

The Washington Post published an opinion page article on Friday in which a long-time columnist chastised the paper for making mistakes in its coverage of the Lynch rescue.

''I take my own paper to task for the manner in which it reported the Lynch story,'' wrote the Post's Richard Cohen.

The Post initially said Lynch was shot and stabbed as she fought off her attackers ''gun blazing'' until she was taken prisoner.

''Trouble is, much of that may be false,'' Cohen wrote, adding Lynch was likely neither shot nor stabbed.

''Maybe the Pentagon hyped the Lynch story. Maybe in the confusion of the rescue, some honest people in the Pentagon just got things wrong. Whatever the case, The Post seemed unable simply to say so,'' Cohen added.

Army spokesman Bruce Anderson said the military was doing its own investigation into the capture of Lynch. ''It's an after-action review of a significant incident,'' Anderson said.

The Army's Criminal Investigation unit is doing a separate investigation into the treatment of U.S. prisoners of war to determine whether any war crimes were committed by Iraqis. Unit spokesman Chris Gray said investigators had been on the ground in Iraq since the beginning of the conflict.

One person unlikely to shed any light on what happened is Lynch, who doctors say has no recollection of the event.

Reut15:56 05-23-03