IRAQ WAR TURNS SURREAL

The truth about Jessica Lynch

From the Guardian:

The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team's Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. "He asked: 'Are there any Fedayeen over there?' and I said, 'No'." All the same, the next day "America's finest warriors" descended on the building.

"We heard the noise of helicopters," says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame.

And

Back in 2001, the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer, had visited the Pentagon to pitch an idea. Bruckheimer and fellow producer Bertram van Munster, who masterminded the reality show Cops, suggested Profiles from the Front Line, a primetime television series following US forces in Afghanistan. They were after human stories told through the eyes of the soldiers. Van Munster's aim was to get close and personal. He said: "You can only get accepted by these people through chemistry. You have to have a bond with somebody. Only then will they let you in. What these guys are doing out there, these men and women, is just extraordinary. If you're a cheerleader of our point of view - that we deserve peace and that we deal with human dignity - then these guys are really going out on a limb and risking their own lives."

It was perfect reality TV, made with the active cooperation of Donald Rumsfeld and aired just before the Iraqi war. The Pentagon liked what it saw. "What Profiles does is given another in depth look at what forces are doing from the ground," says Whitman. "It provides a very human look at challenges that are presented when you are dealing in these very difficult situations." That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.

Just when I'm starting to feel like the Bush administration can no longer shock me, out comes this. It appears that the daring rescue of Jessica Lynch was, by and large, staged. Amazing. That Rumsfeld and Bush are fond of cheap propaganda is already well known. After all, they brought us the whiz-bang aircraft carrier show only a short time ago. That they would stoop to such extraordinarily trashy lows with their cheap propaganda is simply overkill. If I understand this correctly, the whole thing was like an episode of Cops--virtually the entire event was simply a television show. What amazes me is that they even felt like they needed to do it. Were they worried that the peace movement was going to put an end to the war? God, c'mon! It's maddening!

(To add insult to injury, they chose to emulate a Fox show. Too bad they didn't pick Married with Children.)

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

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