I nominate Jessica Lynch for a Congressional Medal of Honor

Discussion in 'Politics' started by OPTIONAL777, Apr 3, 2003.

  1. Have you ever served in the armed forces? This is absolutely false. All soldiers are trained for battle and every soldier that is out in the Iraqi desert right now understands that they could be attacked at any moment. The only difference is that her MOS is something other than infantry, but she has definitely been trained to defend herself and her unit in the event she is attacked. Obviously she did so because they found dead Iraqi's there as well.

    Why should the fact that she is a woman make any sort of difference? Every enlisted person and officer understands that when they sign on the dotted line, there is a chance that they will be called upon in times of war to put their life on the line in defense of their country.

    What she did is great and I'm glad her family is going to see her alive shortly -- but let's not pump up a story solely for the "oh wow gee she survived" effect. If she's going to get a medal, everyone else within her unit should get one as well. Let's not forget the sacrifice of their families -- who won't be seeing them again.
     
    #41     Apr 3, 2003
  2. Babak

    Babak

    I think that girl deserves HUGE kudos but I don't think she deserves the CMO. If she had killed her captors and fled then I would give her the medal without another thought.

    This is the account of HOW she was freed. It came about from an Iraqi man. A normal person who was at the hospital visiting his wife who was there. He learned about a woman POW and saw her mistreated. He put himself at risk to walk to the Marines and tell them. He actually made the harrowing trip to and fro between the city and US positions many times to give them detailed info on the hospital allowing them to have the map of the place and put in place a rescue operation.

    If anyone deserves a medal, it is this man for putting himself at risk (as well as his family) to save the life of a woman he did not know.

    http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/5552797.htmv


    "I love America. I like America. Why, I don't know," Mohammed said as he recounted the critical role he played in Lynch's rescue.
     
    #42     Apr 3, 2003
  3. Iraqi informer angered by treatment of POW
    By JUAN O. TAMAYO
    Knight Ridder Newspapers



    MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq - The Iraqi man who tipped U.S. Marines to the location of American POW Jessica Lynch said Thursday he did so after he saw her Iraqi captor slap her twice as she lay wounded in a hospital.

    "A person, no matter his nationality, is a human being," the tipster, a 32-year-old lawyer whose wife was a nurse at the hospital, said in an interview at Marines' headquarters, where he, his wife and daughter are being treated as heroes and guests of honor.

    "He is an extremely courageous man who should serve as an inspiration to all of us to do the right thing," said Lt. Col. Rick Long, spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

    After he saw Lynch slapped, the lawyer slipped into her room at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah and told her, "Don't worry." Then he walked six miles to the nearest U.S. Marines and told them where she was.

    He later returned to the hospital, at the request of U.S. commanders, to map the facility and count how many Saddam Hussein loyalists were there.

    A U.S. commando force whose name remains secret rescued Lynch early Wednesday local time. She was taken Thursday to Germany for treatment of injuries she suffered when she was captured.

    The lawyer, whose first name is Mohammed and who asked that his last name not be published, smiled between every sentence as he recounted in broken but expressive English how he helped the Americans. He learned English at Basra University.

    Wearing Marine hand-me-downs after fleeing with only the clothes on their backs, Mohammed, his wife Iman, 32, a nurse at Saddam Hospital, and 6-year-old daughter Abir, seemed surprisingly cheerful for a family on the run.

    Grateful Leathernecks showered them with Marine unit patches, a commemorative coin and an American flag on their way to a refugee center near the port of Umm Qsar, where they hope to ride out the war.

    "I love America. I like America. Why, I don't know," Mohammed said as he recounted the critical role he played in Lynch's rescue.

    Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has long repressed Iraq's people with such a brutal grip that even with American troops at the gates to Baghdad many refuse to rise up against him out of fear that he will outlast the Americans.

    But Mohammed's tale is one of a man who didn't like what he saw when he walked into the Saddam Hospital last Friday to visit his wife and was told by a doctor friend that an American woman POW was in the emergency ward.

    The friend walked him to the ground-floor ward, taken over by the feared Saddam Fedayeen at the start of the war, and past a window where he saw Lynch, an Army private first class captured after her convoy became lost near Nasiriyah in the opening days of the war.

    Her head was bandaged, her right arm was in a sling over a white blanket and she had what Mohammed thought was a gunshot wound to a leg. But her real problem then was the black-uniformed Fedayeen commander who everyone addressed as "colonel."

    The man slapped her, Mohammed said. "One, two," he added, making single slapping and back slap motions with his right hand. She was very brave, he recalled.

    "My heart cut," Mohammed added, meaning stopped, putting his hand over his chest and grimacing. "There, I have decided to go to Americans to give them important information about the woman prisoner."

    He walked into her room with his doctor friend. "I said 'Good morning.' She thought I was a doctor. I say, 'Don't worry.' She smiled," he recalled.

    Doctors treating Lynch wanted to amputate her leg, Mohammed said, but his doctor friend persuaded them not to. His friend, he said, "hates Saddam Hussein and hates security of Saddam Hussein."

    Mohammed said he told his wife to take their daughter to his father's house for safety, and then set off on foot to find the American troops he had heard were occupying the edges of Nasiriyah.

    "This was very dangerous for me because American soldiers shoot," he said, throwing up his hands in the air to show how he carefully approached what turned out to be the U.S. Marines.

    He told them about the woman prisoner, and about a U.S. military uniform he had also seen, presumably of a U.S. soldier killed in the fighting in and around Nasiriyah, some of the heaviest of the war.

    They asked him to return to the six-story, 234-bed hospital to gather information on its layout, its hallways, stairways and doors, its basement and whether a helicopter could land on its roof.

    He walked back, with no taxis in sight, even as U.S. jets bombed parts of the city of more than 500,000 people. "Boom, boom. I walked under bombs. Fire, Fire," Mohammed recalled.

    He did the same thing the next day to report back to the Marines.

    There were 41 Fedayeen based at the hospital, with four guarding Lynch's room in civilian clothes but armed with AK-47 assault rifles and carrying radios.

    "I drew them a map. I drew them five maps," he said, plainly relishing his cloak-and-dagger missions into the heart of Saddam's terror network.

    Fedayeen raided his house the next day, he said, taking away all his possessions and even his car, a Russian-made Muscovitch Brazilia 680. He said a neighbor was shot and her body dragged through the streets just for waving at a U.S. helicopter.

    "Very bad people," he said. "There is no kindness in my heart for them."

    He got his family out of Nasiriyah on Tuesday night, hours before a task force of U.S. commandos rescued Lynch in a raid so noteworthy that the U.S. Central Command in Qatar called a 4:30 a.m. news conference to announce it.

    Four American journalists who have had regular access to the Marines' combat operations center in southern Iraq were asked to stay away from the COC as the rescue operation was getting underway.

    Mohammed and his family are now officially "temporary refugees."

    After showers, Mohammed put on an oversized green Marine pullover, his wife put on one of the gray T-shirts that MTV donated to the Leathernecks and his daughter was covered to her knees in a green T-shirt from a Marine chemical warfare unit.

    But Mohammed did not appear despondent, as his wife smiled and stayed shyly in the background and daughter Abir played with a neon-green illumination stick given to her by a Marine.

    "I am very happy," he said, adding that his wife wants to work in a hospital helping Americans and that he is eager to help the Marines any way he can until he can return home to Nasiriyah and resume his normal life.

    "In future, when Saddam Hussein down, I will go back to Nasiriyah because my house and office are there," he said. As for the Fedayeen, he said, "when Saddam Hussein down, I sure they go away."

    "Believe me, not only I, all the people of Iraq, not the people in the government, like Americans," Mohammed said. "They want to help the Americans, but they are all afraid."
     
    #43     Apr 3, 2003
  4. Ah well, if she doesn't get a medal she will just have to settle for a (ghost written) book and, what's more, the film rights to the book.

    The title is easy to arrive at of course, 'Saving private Lynch'.

    Bad luck of course having to settle for second best, probably merely just a half million or so in her skirt pocket. :D

    freealways
     
    #44     Apr 3, 2003
  5. 777,

    that is a great story about the brave iraqi attorney ! thanks for posting that, it renews my faith in human nature.

    wonderful !


    surfer :)
     
    #45     Apr 3, 2003

  6. I guess someone forgot to tell him that getting rid of Saddam's army of murderous parasites was "shameful" and "illegal."
     
    #46     Apr 3, 2003
  7. did her job, and she did it well. She was trained how to use an M-16, and when it came time to use it, she did. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a female soldier fought back with her rifle. What PFC Lynch did we should expect to be the norm, and not the exception.

    She has tremendous heart and fortitude, but so do most of the troops in theater right now.

    I agree with the other posters here who have stated that she is not deserving of the Medal of Honor.

    The Iraqi lawyer certainly deserves something, and not just a medal! Give this man a house, a car, and a job when the dust settles, or let him move to the US. Now HE is a "hero."
     
    #47     Apr 4, 2003
  8. No, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn one time....

    Have you ever been a 19 year old female supply line soldier with no battle experience?


    No, and dressing like a girl wearing a pith helmet doesn't count....


    [​IMG]
     
    #48     Apr 4, 2003
  9. OK I gotta ask.....Every tiem Aphie posts something stupid ( which is pretty often , sorry aphie)...You always post that picture.....IS THAT REALLY A PICTURE OF OUR APHIE? NO fooling?
     
    #49     Apr 4, 2003
  10. the justification for women serving in traditionally-male military roles depends on the assertion that they are in every way as capable as men to perform them.

    to treat her differently solely because she is female negates that assertion, and implies that the policy subjects male soldiers to greater danger and sacrifices overall efficiency to further PC agendas.
     
    #50     Apr 4, 2003