Memory, wagging dogs and Jessica Lynch

A regular reader recently sent me the following:

Anyway, did you know that 60 Minutes aired a human interest story on Pvt. Jessica Lynch and her family a month or so PRIOR to her shipping out for duty in Iraq? I know, because my wife and I happened to see the original CBS telecast.

I can't give you the exact date, but there's absolutely no question that 60 Minutes went on location to her picturesque home town in West Virginia in order to interview the comely trooper and her doting mom, dad and brother. They all sat around the quintessentially american Lynch family kitchen table (it even had a checkered table cloth) and shared their thoughts and feelings about how Jessica's unit was being activated for overseas duty, and that the blonde lass would shortly be stationed in the sands of the Middle East bravely serving in what would probably soon turn into a war zone. At the time, [my wife] and I regarded it an especially saccharine bit of journalism. Little did we know just how sinister an artificial sweetener it was actually laced with.

I've looked around quite extensively and nobody ever mentions this absurdly impossible coincidence.

The implication here is that, well before hostilities began, the instigators of the Iraq war conjured up a heart-tugging story a la Wag the Dog. We know that the toppling of the Saddam statue was just such a pre-engineered melodrama: The "liberated Iraqis" who helped to bring the satue down were actually imported goons provided by Achmed Chelabi; real Iraqis were kept away from the area.

While one can find numerous references to "60 Minutes" segments on Lynch after her "rescue," I cannot confirm the claim that the show did a piece on her before the war began. Can you?

That said, there was something odd about this tale from the very beginning. Most people now know that Lynch did not go down fighting like Rambo -- in fact, she never fired her rifle, which jammed. So far, so believable. But every rifle in that unit jammed during the Battle of Nasirirah (or so says Wikipedia, citing Lynch's testimony before Congress). Is that possible? I've never been in the military, so I honestly do not know. I'd like to hear from a veteran on this score.

We now know that -- contrary to original Pentagon reports -- Lynch was not beaten and tortured during her Iraqi captivity. Those reports originated with a young Iraqi "lawyer" named Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, whose bio sure looks fun-kay.

After witnessing the alleged abuse, al-Rehaief walked six miles to tell his story to the Americans, then went back to do recon work at the hospital, which he videotaped with a concealed camera. Ronald Kessler says that this recon operation was performed by a CIA "agent," although he does not admit that the videographer was al-Rehaief himself, a fact which we know from other sources. Putting two and two together, one may thus fairly conclude that the man was, in fact, a CIA agent. Question: When was he recruited? Before the invasion, or after?

After al-Rehaief relocated to the U.S., he got the standard book deal payoff (a $300,000 advance from a Murdoch imprint for a propaganda volume) followed by a well-paid sinecure at the Livingston Group, the high-powered lobbying organization which now represents the Republic of Turkey. (Now entering Sibel Edmonds territory!) Livingston counts among its partners one Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who seems to be the primary promoter (I would never be so bold as to suggest ghost writer) of that book. Previously, Fitz-Pegado created the "incubator babies" story which we all recall from the first Gulf War.

You may recall that, during the run-up to Dubya's invasion, media propagandists dusted off the incubator fib and tried to sell it to the public again, even though it had been thoroughly exposed. Despite the fervor of the public mood in 2003, quite a few writers called bullshit on that resurrected yarn. The controversy ended in a small spate of stories telling us: "Accounts differ; we may never know the truth." It is more comforting to think that "accounts differ" than to admit that newspapers print planted stories. When the "Saving Jessica" tale unraveled, we heard similar excuses: The "differing accounts" of her rescue testify not to official mendacity but to the ultimate unknowability of anything and everything, or so we were told. Better to have the public mumbling about Rashomon than to admit that Fitz-Pegado is a particularly cocky wag-the-dogger.

The question is: Did this particular wag-the-dog scheme begin before the war (as my correspondent suggests), or was it an ad hoc affair, born of opportunity as events unfolded? Even if the latter scenario is true, the propagandists overstepped when they falsely claimed that a (nonexistent) "medical report" proved that Lynch had been anally raped while wounded and unconscious. What on earth made the dog-waggers think that they could get away with that?

By the way: While researching this post -- which turned out to be, in more ways than one, a trip down memory lane -- I came across this hate site from yesteryear. The author became so emotionally wedded to the original "Saving Jessica" scenario that he decided to dismiss the emergent reality as the evil concotion of a Great Liberal Conspiracy. Rhetoric of that sort reminds us of the sick spirit of the times. In 2002 and 2003, ultra-conservatism became a form of rabies, and nearly everyone you met had specks of foam dribbling from his or her mouth. The next outbreak should hit in 2010 or 2011, and I expect the "foam factor" to be even worse.

Oh -- and need I remind you that the televised insta-movie on the Lynch "rescue" (broadcast in November of 2003, even though the tale had been exposed months earlier) was shown on MSNBC?

Hm. What other exercise in political theater has MSNBC staged recently?

You know, next time I decide to fight a traffic ticket, I may tell the judge: "Accounts differ. We may never know the truth. Ever see Rashomon, your honor?"