Firing blanks?
Politics 05/16/2003 |The rescue of Jessica Lynch is making the rounds again, only this time with more details — according to one of the doctors at the hospital, the troops entering the hospital were firing blanks.
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.
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p>Admittedly, this is one man’s unconfirmed word — but given that real bullets would leave holes that blanks wouldn’t, the claim could be disproved easily enough that I’m not sure he’d make it up. We’ll probably never know for sure, though.
(via Tom Tomorrow)
[See also: No, really, it’s not propaganda | Jackie… | The Incredibles | Pvt. Lynch refutes military rescue claims | Justifying the space program ]
6 Responses to “Firing blanks?”
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schinji
dang
Cheryl
Bertamum
Michael Hanscom
May 17th, 2003 at 10:05 am
I read about this in today’s ADN. If truue, it is so sad for many reasons:
Private Lynch has beern used for propoganda purposes by our government;
It will sully all, not just those of the fake rescue.
It shows, once again, the government lying. Have we learned nothing from Viet Nam, Wategate, etc?
We shall see how this develops. I guess the saddest thing of all is that I believe it could be true.
May 18th, 2003 at 8:00 am
It appears too many people in high places saw and copied the movie ” Wag the dog “
( I guess the saddest thing of all is that I believe it could be true. )
Could be true ? The track record of our ( and I use this word loosely) leaders… as you point out so well is less than 100% honest, hell…I would be happy if it was in the 90% range but reality forces me to say I think it’s down around 25-30%. I do believe that we are lied to all the time. Day in and day out. When ever it serves their purpose. We know about the big lies, Water Gate, Viet Nam, Kennedy etc….. But it’s the little lies day in and day out that tear the fabric of this once great nation apart. Bush just the other day stood up proudly and announced to the world he was giving 15 million ( I have forgotten the amount ) to the fight against AIDS. The part that he forgot to mention was 75% of the money was going to right wing political groups with PC names like ” Americans for decency ” you know the ones I’m talking about. The ” Just say no ” groups. Didn’t Ron and Nancy try just say no ? Did it work ? They twist their language to fit the facts that they want it to fit. The use words that mislead people. “Friendly fire” ? There’s nothing remotely friendly about dying. ” Defence of marriage act ” How does Bill and Bob getting married in Hawaii effect Fred and Mary in New York ? and why does their marriage need defending ? ” Peacekeeper Missiles ” What? We want peace and if we have to kill you to get it we will ? I could go on and on but you get my point. The worst part Wudi, and I’m sure John would agree, is we used to watch something called news. Journalists ( not actors or entertainers ) talked to us about world events. The news divisions at all the major networks ran with the sole purpose to keep the nation informed. There were no ratings there no overnight numbers and advertisers and stockholders had no say … Ever. Walter Cronkite ( CBS news ) was in fact ” The most trusted man in America ” I’m sure the government fed him and others misinformation ( of that there’s no doubt ) but if Walter said it then we knew HE believed it. And he checked his facts he didn’t just read a sheet that was placed in front of him. Near the end of Viet Nam war and near the end of Walter Cronkite’s career he stopped looked at the camera and talked to the American people about the war. He was clear that he had tried to keep his personal feeling out of it but he couldn’t any longer. He went on to say how bad the war was and begged Nixon to end it. Nixon was watching the news in the White House, and after Nixon died they released the white house tapes and there is Nixon listening to Walter Cronkite and he says to his chief of staff. ” We’ve lost Walter and if we’ve lost him we’ve lost the American people ” So true. Well they didn’t call him tricky Dick for nothing. I’m not picking on Republicans because the Democrats do it too. It just seems the Republicans do it more often and are meaner at it. sometimes getting downright nasty.
A few years back a Dem. was opposing a bill in the House ( I’ve forgotten his name, I’ll call him Bill ) Barny Frank ( who is gay ) also opposed the bill and one of the Republicans said if Bill ( who is straight ) wants to join up with Barney he need to come out of the closet and face the facts. ( this is from memory so don’t quote me ) The use of the words ( Join up with Barney ) and ( out of the closet ) were not random words, those words were picked with the sole intention of misleading the American people into thinking that Bill was gay. (stuff like this is just down right mean and nasty)
After misleading the people for years with twisting statements and errors of omission. Complete and total fabrication of the news seems the next logical step. What’s next State run Television ? or our we already there and don’t know it. Go check what’s happening with the FCC and Clear Channel and you’ll see what I mean.
Damm you Wudi ! I was all relaxed and now my blood pressure is up again.
Grrrrr
May 18th, 2003 at 3:12 pm
I read about this in the ADN. Here is another thing I find weird - normally, a story like this would be all over the internet, and every conspiricy theorist would be having a field day, but the story was not on either MSN or YAHOO news yesterday or today, and, though I have not had time to check today, I tried to read more on this yesterday and did a “Google Search,” and the story was not there.
Weird.
Where are the usual commentators, the conservatives saying it is all left-wing hooey and the liberals saying “How typical.”? Where are “the usual gang of suspects?”
Have they all been shipped off to Gitmo, or something?
May 19th, 2003 at 11:07 am
ah, john, you’re experiencing what i’ve been experiencing for a few months now.
sort of makes me wonder if i’m going crazy sometimes, to be honest. you see the story or the action or the new patriot-related arrests, and you think - they can’t do that! that’s wrong! why isn’t anyone saying anything? does anyone else see this??!
you see the story, you see the information - but it’s barely being touched inside the US. Outside you can find it quite readily, usually in a UK or Australian newspaper.
Just to emphasize the point - I did this search on Google’s news search. You’ll notice that it came up with stories from the BBC, the Sydney Morning Herald, TomPaine.com in DC, the Toronto Star, several Islamic news sites (including Al Jazeerah), and Newsday (which turned out to be sort of an op-ed piece in a New York paper, and the ‘go go go’ and blanks references are buried in the story). Checking in a little further though, shows results for papers in Utah, North Carolina, Florida, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, California, Minnesota, and Ohio. Most of them seem to reference the BBC story - or are simply running the same story by Don Melvin of the Cox News Service with slightly different headlines.
most people in our country want to look away, I think, and so the media follows them (more likely it’s the other way around). as for the usual gang of conservatives and liberals - the conservatives know better than to bring it up because the liberals won’t. because most liberals (of the kerry/lieberman variety) think we should be leaning more to the right in order to please the American people (who are so gung ho for bush and the rove machine). So they don’t challenge the right. Which means the right gets away with what it wants for now.
May 19th, 2003 at 3:22 pm
Kirsten - once again thanks. When I have time, I will reference these sites.
I don’t think your going crazy at all. I suppose the crazy thing, for me, is that, after seeing this again and again, I am always amazed when it happens.
May 19th, 2003 at 10:25 pm
I did a little digging around on some other search engines…
Daypop, which indexes weblogs and news sites either together or seperately, returns 41 hits (of which I’m #2 and #3 — woohoo!) when searching weblogs, but five hits for news sites.
Feedster, which indexes only RSS feeds, returns only nine hits right now.
While it’s difficult to draw much of a conclusion from these results, each of these search engines are more immediately topical than Google is — stories will show up quickly when they break, but they also fade faster after a few days. Where Google’s strength is in pure breadth of results, both Daypop and Feedster have focused on tracking immediate topical trends and memes. Since we’re searching a few days after the story broke, the initial furor of posts may have died down. Interesting to look at, at least.
I think the story is out there, and is making the rounds where you’d expect it to be, only these days the mainstream media is so under the thumb of Bush et al (either directly, or because they’re too scared to buck the status quo) that you have to know where and how to look to find the dissenting voices.