Back in a time when bin Laden was still Wanted -- Dead or Alive ...
In an invincible era when Republicans were "spiking the football" at every opportunity
-- America was told the iconic story of Jessica Lynch, for weeks on end, it seemed.
About how this injured soldier, captured in the heat of battle, who was being held in squalor and forced to endure being "tortured by the enemy";
About how America's brave soldiers pulled off a daring midnight raid, to rescue PFC Lynch from the evil-doers intending her harm -- just in the nick of time, too.
Only one small problem with all that congratulatory chest-thumping on behalf of the Cheney-Bush spin-machine,
it later turned out that much of the story we were told about Jessica Lynch, turned out to be untrue ...
Oops.
Jessica Dawn Lynch (born April 26, 1983) is a former Private First Class (PFC) in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps. Lynch served in Iraq during the 2003 invasion by U.S. and allied forces. On March 23, 2003 she was injured and captured by Iraqi forces but was recovered on April 1 by U.S. Special Operations Forces, with the incident subsequently receiving considerable news coverage. Lynch's was the first successful rescue of an American POW since World War II and the first ever of a woman.
Initial media reports on Lynch's recovery in Iraq were incorrect. Lynch, along with major media outlets, faults the U.S. government for creating the story as part of the Pentagon's propaganda effort.[1][2][3]
On April 24, 2007, she testified in front of Congress that she had never fired her weapon; her M16 rifle jammed, and that she had been knocked unconscious when her vehicle crashed.[2]
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Source: Wikimedia Commons
On April 1, 2003, US Marines from 2nd battalion 8th Marines, 1st battalion 2nd Marines, under the command of the U.S. Army, staged a diversionary attack, besieging nearby Iraqi irregulars to draw them away from Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah. Meanwhile, an element from the Joint Special Operations Task Force Task Force 121, U.S. Army Special Forces, Air Force Pararescue Jumpers (PJs), and Army Rangers, and 1st SFOD-D (Delta Force) launched a nighttime raid on the hospital and successfully retrieved Lynch and the bodies of eight other American soldiers.[14]
According to certain accounts of doctors present during the raid, they were gathered into groups at gunpoint and treated as possible hostiles until they could be identified as being hospital staff. Many military and Special Operations Forces experts have defended the tactics of the operators who led the raid, saying that Special Operations Forces teams are trained to expect the worst and move quickly, initially treating each person they encounter as a possible threat. Additionally, the doctors stated that the Iraqi military had left the hospital the day before and that no one in the hospital had offered any resistance to the American forces during the raid.
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That was one half-truth tale, from a diversionary war;
a war filled with a long, long line of half-true tales, to follow.
But that did NOT stop the gun-ho Republican administration from 'spiking the football' at every turn.
At every "unknown-knowable" opportunity they got. Afterall they were out for "Justice" -- it's just that they forgot to ask "Justice for Who?"
Celebrating "Mission(s) Accomplished" is quite easy to do, when you redefine "the goalposts" at every opportunity you get.
Moving those Goalposts -- that is the one thing the Republican War Hawks are quite skilled at ...
That and telling tall tales, to justify our long-suffering misery -- in carrying out a seemingly endless Mission of 'waging War against an Idea.'
The next time some shusshing Republican scolds the current Administration's steadfast defense efforts, as being too full of verbravo and unwarranted pride, taken at the closing of the bin Laden era ...
Tell them two words, Jessica Lynch.
And about how long America was encouraged to bask in that celebratory tale.