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ARTICLE: No oath needed for Jessica Lynch (The Virginian-Pilot - HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com)

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No oath needed for Jessica Lynch

The Virginian-Pilot

© April 28, 2007

Jessica Lynch turns out to be a genuine American hero.

Not because of what she did in Iraq, but because of what she did after she came home - told the truth.

How sad that mere truth-telling should elevate someone to an exceptional status. But much about the Iraq War has been sad, and saddest of all is the way truth has been snared time and again by webs of fantasy and deception.

The apparent need by some in the military - and perhaps the Bush administration - to concoct battlefield heroism where none existed is merely a part of a whole. The all-too-compliant media at first accepted the official versions of what happened to Lynch and, separately, to former NFL player Pat Tillman, only to learn later that key elements in the stories were fiction.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the roles, if any, of the Pentagon and the White House in spreading the deceit. The Democrats leading that panel will only deepen the harm if they, too, allow a preconceived story line to trump truth.

Just 19 at the time she was branded "the most famous GI in the Iraq War," Lynch was captured during an ambush of her convoy in March 2003. According to the early official version, the pretty Army private from Palestine, W.Va., battled fiercely before being captured and taken to an Iraq hospital, where she was rescued eight days later by a swarm of U.S. special forces.

Only after Lynch herself began telling the story did it become clear that she never fired a shot (in fact, her rifle jammed), that Iraqi doctors actually tried to send her back and that the hospital was unguarded when the special forces came storming.

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"I'm confused why they lied," Lynch testified Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps former U.S. Sen. Hiram Johnson, R-Calif., could have told her. "The first casualty when war comes is truth, " he is famously purported to have said regarding World War I.

Members of Cpl. Tillman's family, who also testified to the committee, attributed misconceptions about his death to the military's and the administration's need for "good news" from a quickly souring war front. Tillman was gunned down on April 23, 2004, while on duty in Afghanistan. Not until some weeks later did the Army tell the Tillman family what had been obvious almost immediately to those on the scene, that he was felled by friendly fire from U.S. troops.

The decision to say that his brother died heroically fighting the enemy was "utter fiction," Kevin Tillman told the panel.

Under extensive pressure, the military concluded last month that nine high-ranking Army officers, including four generals, made critical errors in reporting Tillman's death. There was no criminal wrongdoing in his shooting, the military concluded.

While the investigations go on, Lynch brings a voice of welcome clarity. "The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideas of heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate lies," she said.

That understanding, so eloquent in its simplicity, makes Lynch what she claims not to be - a hero after all.