Printing the Legend

Well, here's a thing: Jessica Lynch, the former US army private and Heroine of the War on Evil, has insulted the American people and accused the Pentagon of trying to turn her into a "little girl Rambo" with "elaborate tales" about her fighting to the last cartridge against hordes of Saddamite orcs (or perhaps it was foreign fanatics) when she was captured (or possibly kidnapped) in Iraq. Lynch was severely injured, and several of her comrades killed, when their vehicle was hit by a rocket early in the war. She was rescued from hospital (or maybe a fate worse than death) by US commandos, who by a happy chance were able to video their mission of mercy for the Pentagon to release at what Mark Tran refers to as "the height of the conflict". It appears that Mark Tran believes the conflict has eased off a bit since 2003. The Pentagon also claimed that Lynch had been abused while in the hospital.

Lynch testified today that her gun jammed, so she never fired a shot at the Ba'athist cadres, who must have been prevented from putting a mushroom cloud over New York by some other means. Lynch also said that she had been well treated in the hospital and that the Iraqis had tried to return her to her own forces. She then roundly abused the American people, claiming that "American people don't need to be told elaborate tales" about their military personnel. This is, of course, an outrageous calumny. If the Pentagon had not told its elaborate tales about Lynch, Pat Tillman and others, there is every chance that the American people might have objected rather strongly to the War on the Abstract Noun. In that case, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan might well be in nowhere near the state they are in today; and we all know what that would mean.