Those stories didn’t come from the Pentagon. The military didn’t put out any specific information on her medical condition. In fact, I have read that it would have violated privacy laws for them to have done so.
Sorry - my point was that the US army does not appear to have lied on this issue. I’ve not seen specific reporting and claims by US newspapers, so have no idea if they’ve lied or not.
Well december, I rather suspect that the stories did come from the Pentagon or military sources, through that wonderful route of plausible deniability, the lunch/dinner/beer with the journo. I’ve seen it done quite a lot over here.
Doesn’t mean, of course, “The Pentagon” planted the story, might very well be a case of misunderstanding/over eager press officer/ garbled story to an Attache etc.
So, on one hand I might not want to issue sweeping condemnations of the Pentagon on this, but I very much doubt the stories self-generated or are purely journo inventions…
Heaven only knows where the stories came from. However, journalistic errors are not evidence of government conspiracy. The Jayson Blair/ New York Times scandal shows that even the best of newspapers are capable of falling into error without a push from behind.
The culprit is found!Dateline April 5th, 2003, Associated Press
So, it seems the FAMILY may have started this story, one that the Military doctor had already denied. Will the BBC be doing an expose on the Lynch family?
And her family were told my Army doctors.
Or the cousin wanted his name in the papers and misunderstood, misinterpreted, or just plain lied. Note the line
from the military doctor on the scene.
That matches the article I linked to on page 1. No bullet wounds or stabbings.
I was in the car listening to Jessica’s father talk to the press after she was rescued. Until that day the family had no idea she was a POW, all they knew was that she was MIA. So they were elated, naturally, and then someone asked how he felt that she was the only one out of 10 or so found alive…they weren’t aware of that either, the father couldn’t go on talking after that point. The family obviously was not any source of information. The Post, CNN, et al were given bad information from the usual “highly placed sources”, who’ll remain unnamed, and they ran with it. Business as usual.
Tee:
Who would these “highly placed sources” be?
Are you suggesting that there was a campaign of disinformation planned by military intelligence to suggest Lynch had been shot for propaganda value?
That would be quite a conclusion to jump to.
It seems more likely to me that what actually occurs with something like this is that you get a lot of excitement. You have reporters looking and working very hard to get information. Rumors fly and some of them stick when they’re really nothing more than speculation.
I see no reason to posit a conspiracy when excitement and rumor explain the issue succinctly.
If anyone can find a source quoted (named or unnamed) in the media other than Dan Little, cousin of Jessica Lynch, regarding this false report of gunshot wounds, I’d be interested to see it, kind of as a post-mortem on rampant media speculation and lies. As for Dan’s story above, he (apparently) said that falsehood to the media, alleging he heard it from the docs. It may or may not have been said to him, and he may or may not have been aware of its accuracy. I am not a lawyer, but wouldn’t his statement saying he heard it from the docs be considered hearsay? The only hard source of that story I have found was him.
http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/2003041919/
An article relaying reporting in the Times of London, saying she was brought in with a Gunshot wound.
Thanks, Twisty. They didn’t name a source for that tidbit, although the reader is left to assume it is “Dr. Harith al-Houssona, a 24-year-old junior resident at the hospital”, since he is the only source quoted in the story.
A blog site has uncited quotes, apparently c&p’ed
A blog as a cite? Are you trying to emulate your hero december? 
I’m not the one jumping there. No, I don’t think there was any misinformation campaign at all, just rumor or heresay from anoymous sources reported as fact, and I think the whole “propaganda value” thing is a non-story. This John Kampfner wanted to raise questions about the integrity of the operation (via the Guardian and the BBC) and is now clarifying what he meant - that he doesn’t believed anything was faked. All he was trying to say was that there was no need for all the fuss and special operations - anyone could have driven up and gotten her. I don’t believe a word of it, of course, but he’s entitled to say whatever he thinks.