NEWSWEEK: Myth Making - The New Details On The Making Of The Jessica Lynch Myth

[Hissyspit]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368821/site/newsweek

Myth Making
Congressional investigators have discovered that at least one U.S. military official provided the media with details about Jessica Lynch’s heroic acts—a tale that was later proven to be untrue.

http://www.imgred.com/

Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Lynch tried to help Congress unravel the myth around her capture this week

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Mark Hosenball
Updated: 12:39 p.m. ET April 28, 2007

April 28, 2007 - The Pentagon has always denied responsibility for creating the myth that PFC Jessica Lynch went down fighting. Even last week, while Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman conducted hearings about misinformation in the Lynch and Pat Tillman cases, military officials (requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case) insisted they did not know how the tale of Lynch's heroics first got into circulation. But congressional investigators have dug up evidence that a military official did in fact provide at least one newspaper with details of Lynch’s alleged exploits.

- snip -

In an April 3, 2003 story, The Military Times, a specialist newspaper, quoted Navy Capt. Frank Thorp as saying Lynch waged quite a battle prior to her capture. At the time, Thorp was one of the U.S. military’s senior spokesmen in the Persian Gulf. Now a rear admiral, he serves today as a deputy to Dorrance Smith, the Pentagon's public relations chief. (Smith was not head of public affairs at the time Lynch was captured.) "We do have very strong indications that Jessica Lynch was not captured very easily ... Reports are that she fired her until she had no more ammunition,” Thorp said at the time, shortly after Lynch was retrieved from an Iraqi hospital by U.S. forces.

- snip -

Thorp told NEWSWEEK that he was not a source for a key Washington Post story about Lynch’s purported exploits which cited anonymous sources and appeared on the same day as the Military Times piece. He also said his quoted account regarding Lynch's alleged valor was more tentative and less dramatic than the version offered by the Post. Thorp said that while he didn’t remember specifically the remarks quoted by the Military Times, he would not deny saying them. He said he does remember receiving early real-time reports from the battlefield about heroics by members of Lynch's unit, which later turned out to be inaccurate or possibly about other soldiers. But he insisted his only motive in telling the military newspaper about the alleged heroism would have been to make public “the known information we had at the time. My intent was always to provide the facts as we knew them at the time and nothing more."

The Pentagon’s internal watchdog, Inspector General Thomas Gimble, told a House Oversight Committee hearing chaired by Waxman that an investigation conducted by U.S. Central Command failed to substantiate claims by Pentagon critics and the BBC that the U.S. military operation which led to Lynch’s rescue was stage-managed for publicity purposes. When NEWSWEEK asked Centcom for a copy of its Lynch investigation, however, a military spokesman said it was still classified.

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[acmavm]

1. Seems that there's just not very much 'honor' (an old fashioned word)

in the military brass anymore. And that doesn't bode well for the nation.

[flyarm]

2. SOLDIERS INVOLVED IN THE JESSICA LYNCH RESCUE DIED SUSPICIOUSLY

SOLDIERS INVOLVED IN THE JESSICA LYNCH RESCUE DIED SUSPICIOUSLY
Posted by flyarm in General Discussion
Wed Apr 25th 2007, 10:37 AM

4 SOLDIERS INVOLVED IN THE JESSICA LYNCH RESCUE DIED SUSPICIOUSLY...THERE WERE 6 RESCUERS..IN TOTAL..WHO WENT INSIDE THE HOSPITAL./.I WILL POST THE FOUR...

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http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2003/07/0...

Iraq war veteran killed in Highway 11 wreck
Posted Monday, July 7, 2003 - 3:24 am




By Paul Alongi
STAFF WRITER
[e-mail]


Josh Daniel Speer, a 21-year-old Marine who died in a single-vehicle wreck Sunday, poses with his weapons in Iraq.


A Marine who was home for the first time since fighting in Iraq died Sunday morning when the vehicle he was driving veered off State 11 and crashed into some trees, authorities said.
Josh Daniel Speer, 21, died instantly about 8 a.m. while en route to his fiancee's house, said Kent Dill, a Greenville County deputy coroner.

Speer was a member of a unit that helped rescue Jessica Lynch, the Army private captured by Iraqis near Nasiriyah, said Capt. Shawn Turner, a corps spokesman. Details of the unit's role weren't available, he said.

Speer arrived at Camp Lejeune last Saturday after steaming back to the United States aboard the USS Kearsarge. The family said he was back home in Marietta for the first time Thursday and spent the weekend enjoying time with them.





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Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Marine survives Iraq, only to die in America
S.F. man is shot dead by unknown gunman at family party in Long Beach
Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer

Marine Cpl. Sok Khak Ung survived five months in Iraq, avoiding snipers, mortar attacks and suicide bombers. He helped rescue Pfc. Jessica Lynch and later received a Purple Heart after he was wounded in the leg by shrapnel.

But Ung, 22, of San Francisco, did not live even that long after returning to America. He was shot to death last weekend while singing and rapping at a family barbecue in Long Beach. Police said an unknown gunman reached over the fence and sprayed the backyard with bullets.



This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle


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Saturday, October 4, 2003
Suspect in motel slaying found dead
DAVID L. TEIBEL and IRENE HSIAO

Tucson Citizen



A soldier who recently served in Iraq and was sought in the killing of a man outside a Tucson motel this week was found dead in the San Diego area, an apparent suicide, Tucson police said.
The man, Spc. Kyle Edward Williams, 21, was sought on a first-degree murder warrant in the killing Wednesday of Noah P. Gamez, 21, of Tucson.

Sgt. Judy Altieri, a Tucson Police Department spokeswoman, said she did not know whether Williams knew he was being sought in the killing.

"He survived Iraq to come back to this," said his mother, Vicki Williams, when reached by telephone last night in Poway, Calif.

Williams, who worked in technical support for a Patriot missile group, had been with 507th Maintenance Company, from Fort Bliss, Texas. His unit returned to the United States on June 15, Altieri said.


SNIP;

Williams left no suicide note, Altieri said.

Detectives had contacted Williams' family in San Diego in an effort to find him. The family told detectives he had not arrived and was overdue.

Gamez had broken a window on Williams' Jeep and was stealing items, including an ice chest, Wednesday morning outside the soldier's room at the Super 8 Motel, 1000 S. Freeway Drive, Altieri said.

Williams left his room to check out of the motel and saw Gamez taking things from the Jeep, Altieri said.

Williams fired six shots at Gamez, hitting him twice in the torso, as he was leaving, Altieri said, adding that Gamez was not armed.



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http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/dmtapper....

David M. Tapper
Petty Officer First Class, United States Navy
No. 615-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug 21, 2003
[phone](media)
[phone](public/industry)
DoD Identifies Navy Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today that Petty Officer First Class David M. Tapper, 32, of Camden County, New Jersey, died of wounds received in action August 20, 2003 in Afghanistan.

Often called upon to conduct the most harrowing missions, Tapper took part in the April rescue of wounded POW Jessica Lynch, then helped recover the bodies of nine American soldiers buried near the Iraqi hospital where she was held, according to friends and the Tapper family.

After serving in Iraq for two months, Tapper, a father of four, returned to Camden County for a visit during a six-week leave in early summer. Tapper, who had spent most of his 13-year naval career as a SEAL, was reluctant to return to the war zone.

"He said it was too soon," said a sister, who spoke for the family. "He wanted to stay with his children and spend more time with his family in Atco."

But, duty called again last month, this time sending him to Afghanistan, where an increasingly overlooked and vastly dangerous mission to rout the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists grinds on.

Tapper, 32, died there Wednesday while conducting combat operations in a lawless province near the Pakistani border - an area where the military believes the terrorists are operating.

Friends here said Tapper was shot in the back during an ambush. He died later at a hospital at Bagram Air Base, the Navy said.

"David fought a good fight and accomplished his mission in life," said the sister, who asked not to be identified by name. "We know that he is in Heaven and it was the Lord's will to take him there."

A Navy spokesman declined to discuss Tapper's unit or its mission in Afghanistan.

Tapper's wife and four children live in Virginia Beach, Va., where his unit was stationed, but he has a large family in the Atco area, where he grew up and graduated from Edgewood High School in 1989.

[burythehatchet]

3. just a few more in the long list of lives sacrificed for the grand

vision of the boy king.

[justgamma]

4. Tonight's local NBC news

played a just released tape from the Jessica Lynch "rescue". Obviously the Bushies are still pushing the fiction of the "heroic" rescue of Lynch.