OxBlog

Friday, November 07, 2003

# Posted 7:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

DON'T ALWAYS BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ IN THE PAPER, NO. 3815: From the Guardian, May 15th:
[Jessica Lynch's] Iraqi guards had long fled [at the time of her rescue], she was being well cared for - and doctors had already tried to free her....

The doctors in Nassiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for Lynch in the midst of war. She was assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital, and one of only two nurses on the floor. "I was like a mother to her and she was like a daughter,"says Khalida Shinah....

[Lynch's] memory loss means that "researchers" have been called in to fill in the gaps...

Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars.

Their "daring" assault on enemy territory was captured by the military's night-vision camera.
Now from the Washington Post, November 6:
A new authorized biography of the soldier accurately cites medical records indicating Lynch was sexually assaulted, Stephen Goodwin said.

In the [recently released authorized biography] book, [Rick] Bragg writes: "The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead."
Gee, from the Guardian's reporting, I sure would've thought that Pfc Lynch was living in the lap of luxury, you know, like in some kind of (e.g., Hanoi) Hilton, and it was only the Straussian-Volvofitzian-media cabal which had pretended otherwise....

Note too the copious use of scare quotes in the May Guardian report. Perhaps I'll be forgiven if I follow their lead and begin systematically referring to the Guardian as a "news" source. Imitation is the best form of flattery, right?
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