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News :: International Relations |
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So Who Really Did Save Private Jessica? |
Current rating: -1 |
by Richard Lloyd Parry
(No verified email address) |
21 Apr 2003
Modified: 09:47:06 PM |
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The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the US military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimized the doctors who had struggled to save her life, according to Iraqi witnesses. |
The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the US military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimized the doctors who had struggled to save her life, according to Iraqi witnesses. Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city.
Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralyzed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime.
An ambulance driver who tried to carry Private Lynch to the American forces close to the city was shot at by US troops the day before their mission. Far from winning hearts and minds, the US operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked their lives treating both Private Lynch and Iraqi victims of the war. "What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor - it's a myth," said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch's life after she was brought to the hospital by Iraqi military intelligence.
"They said that there was no medical care in Iraq, and that there was a very strong defense of this hospital. But there was no one here apart from doctors and patients, and there was nobody to fire at them.". . .
The American "rescue" operation came on the night of April 2. The hospital was bombarded and soldiers arrived in helicopters and, according to the hospital doctors, in tanks that pulled up outside the hospital. Most of the doctors fled to the shelter of the radiology department on the first floor.
"We heard them firing and shouting: 'Go! Go! Go! Go!' " Dr Harith said. One group of soldiers dug up the graves of dead US soldiers outside the hospital, while another interrogated doctors about Ali Hassan al-Majid, the senior Baath party figure known as Chemical Ali, who had never been seen there. A third group looked for Private Lynch.
US soldiers videotaped the rescue, but among the many scenes not shown to the press at US Central Command in Doha was one of four doctors who were handcuffed and interrogated, along with two civilian patients, one of whom was immobile and connected to a drip. "They were doctors, with stethoscopes round their necks," Dr Harith said. "Even in war, a doctor should not be treated like that."
"There are two faces to Americans," Dr Harith said. "One is freedom and democracy, and giving kids sweets. The other is killing and hating my people. So I am very confused. I feel sad because I will never see Jessica again, and I feel happy because she is happy and has gone back to her life. If I could speak to her I would say: 'Congratulations!'"
Copyright 2003 Times Newspapers Ltd.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ |
