The Private Lynch story ...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-11-10 11:38am

You know, it occurs to me that the Private Lynch story is pretty much a microcosm of the entire Iraqi war. It starts with stories of heroism and good ol' American "getting the job done" workmanship. But then cracks start to show in the facade, and it becomes apparent that the situation was exaggerated. And then we start to wonder why the media, which has prided itself for 30 years on exposing government misdeeds at Watergate, is now eagerly and uncritically lapping up spoonfed droppings from government officials. And then we discover that we were seriously misled about the whole damned thing from the start.

And in the end, while we're glad that the subject of our story is still alive and on the road to recovery, we realize that it was just a big fucking mess, and we can't recall what we were supposed to be so excited about.

Now tell me, does that describe Iraq, Private Lynch, or both?

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-11-10 11:45am

Standard operating procedure for politicians in the US. They can get a lot of milleage off of somone like Jessica Lynch, especially when it now seems that the election is basically going to boil down to how Bush has handles Iraq. If he can keep the patriotism at 9/11 levels until election day, he wins.

I'm not sure that you can blame the media for stuff like this. The American news media reports stories to the public that they want to see (as they are ratings driven) and lately they want to hear meaningless little stories about the brave little girl who conquored all adversity and became a hero. This isn't an insult to Lynch herself but the mentality that the public has in this country about indifference towards larger issues while fixating on the unimportant shit.

Post by **Coyote** » 2003-11-10 01:06pm

If I were to ask people 'what is the mission of the news media?', most of them would answer, 'to inform the public'. But this is horribly wrong.

The most important thing that we must all bear in mind is that the news media is a business. It's primary mission is to make money. Any informing of the public that comes of that is secondary at best.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-11-10 01:08pm

And you're surprised at the American Media giving the US military and the administration a big sloppy blow job why? That's how it always was from
the civil war right up to present day (excepting Vietnam)

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-11-10 04:32pm

That is an interesting comparison, Mike. Not perfect, but there are a lot of similarities.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2003-11-10 07:23pm

The 'patriotic' media makes the money, while the 'liberal elite' media gets tuned out. You're either for us, or against us.

Post by **weemadando** » 2003-11-10 07:26pm

I went to the 2nd International Creative Web conference on the weekend, where the focus was on cross-media stuff, one of the speakers made a great point about Fox News.

"Fox News is great for a simple reason, they smell a story and they run with it straight away. Sure, its often completely incorrect or didn't happen, but the technology today allows them to do a report from the field on a fictitious event with nearly no delay at all."

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-11-10 09:29pm

The so called liberal media was laid off in a corporate merger many years before the war in Iraq. No surpise they are not as dogged about exposing the cracks in the reasons for the war as they were in Vietnam. To be fair however, Ive read that the media bought into the war in Vietnam in the beginning.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2003-11-11 07:07pm

I originally tried to post it in the "Lynch was anally raped" thread, but I got an error.

And this seems somewhat better, I think, for the story.

A friend of mine, who's a Marine Reservist (4th AA Battalion, IIRC), was in Iraq as an AAV crewman. He thinks the whole PFC Lynch thing is so much bullshit. He related to me two stories on the issue:

First, sixteen hours before the whole ambush thing went down, he drove by the convoy she was in. I don't know if he saw her (he probably wouldn't remember; she was just another PFC at the time) but he saw the maintenance people. Their vehicles, in a nice, orderly row, them, outside of them, just smokin' and jokin' and having a good ol' time. Their weapons: locked up inside the trucks. Which, to him as a Marine, just completely dumbfounded him.

Story two: on his way home, he ended up on a maintenance truck. Before they boarded the plane, they had to check their weapons or somesuch(been awhile since I heard the story; I'll see if I can get clarification later). At any rate, these two maintenance guys had to ask him and his fellow Marine for their weapons, as theirs were locked up someplace inaccessible. This, like the previous story, was totally incomprehensible to a Marine.

So, he basically has said that yeah, she was a POW and all, and she would deserve the POW Medal and maybe Purple Heart, but the rest of it is just pure PR bullshit.

Sorry if this seems somewhat offtopic to the OP, but this was the most fitting thread I saw, short of creating a new one. And this is just my reconstruction of various conversations from quite a few weeks ago; may've fudged some details, but the general idea is there.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-11-12 05:26pm

In the local paper today, Lynch was quoted as repeatedly saying that she was *not* a hero, the ones that rescued her were the heros.

Still... I'm debating walking down the street Friday after work and seeing if I can actually get inside Taylor Book Store. She's signing books starting at 5:30p.