On April 3, the day after the story about the rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital, The Post ran a dramatic front-page story headlined ” ‘She Was Fighting to the Death’; Details Emerging of W.Va. Soldier’s Capture and Rescue.” The story was picked up all over the world.
Written by Washington-based reporters Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, it said that Lynch “fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.”
The second paragraph said she “continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said.” The unnamed official also was quoted as saying, “She was fighting to the death. She did not want to be taken alive,” adding that Lynch was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in.
The fourth paragraph contained some cautions. “Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed. Reports thus far are based on battlefield intelligence, they said, which comes from monitored communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose reliability has yet to be assessed. Pentagon officials said they had heard ‘rumors’ of Lynch’s heroics but had no confirmation.” Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon spokeswoman, gave no specifics of Lynch’s condition, the story said, other than that she was in good spirits.
Hours after the Post account appeared, Col. David Rubenstein, commander of the Army hospital in Germany where Lynch was taken, was widely quoted as saying that medical evidence did “not suggest that any of her wounds were caused by either gunshots or stabbing.” On April 4, a Post story from the Lynch home in West Virginia quoted her father, Greg Lynch Sr., as saying, “The doctor has not seen any of this. There’s no entry [wounds] whatsoever.”
At that point, several readers wrote to complain, saying they did not doubt “the gravity of Lynch’s situation,” as one put it, but that The Post, “using unnamed sources,” was “creating a sensationalist story riddled with inaccuracies.” “I smell an agenda,” said one reader, suspecting wartime “propaganda.” Another was suspicious of the “Hollywood-like telling of the story.” My initial reaction, even before the comments of Rubenstein and Lynch’s father, was that a more qualified approach in the headline and the lead of the story was merited because of the cautions in the article and because of the thin sourcing used.
In the next days, however, the story took another turn. On April 7, The Post published an Associated Press story from Germany reporting that “the medical staff” at the hospital said in a statement that “after more closely examining those wounds, there is a possibility they were caused by a low velocity, small caliber weapon.” There was no name associated with the statement.
In stories by other Post reporters on April 6 from Doha, Qatar, and on April 13 and 14 from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, military briefing officers gave no information other than that Lynch looked good and was in satisfactory condition. There has been no statement by an authoritative U.S. or military official since Rubenstein’s. On April 15, Post correspondent Keith B. Richburg reported from Nasiriyah, Iraq, that physicians at the hospital where Lynch was treated as a captive said she suffered fractures to her arms and lower limbs and a small skull wound. “There were no bullets or shrapnel or anything like that,” they said.
Schmidt and Loeb are experienced reporters, and there is no reason to doubt they were told what they reported, and by a source in whom they had confidence. They say it is certain that the descriptions they used are included in sensitive internal intelligence reporting about the rescue. The official silence about Lynch, they suggest, may be due to intelligence classification, possible war crime investigations or other issues.
The issue here is not Lynch, a courageous young soldier, but how that second-day story was handled. Her rescue, filmed by the military and shown on television, came at a crucial time in the U.S. offensive. It seemed to give everyone a lift. The follow-up Post exclusive about her actions and ordeal was a powerful additional element at the time. People remember that story. But what really happened is still not clear. In the sweep of this conflict, the episode is just a footnote. But let’s hope an authoritative public account emerges, at least for journalistic, if not historical, reasons.
