Retired Marine blasts Jessica's medal

Letter to the editor in today's Seattle P-I. Look down the page.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/132847_ltrs30.html

... From the amount of information supplied the public, it appears that Lynch was a passenger in a vehicle that crashed during confusion while under attack, she was injured in the crash, captured and bravely smiled from her stretcher while being rescued. For this she was awarded the Bronze Star, as were all the other survivors of the group with whom she was captured.

It appears the U.S. Army is now awarding Bronze Stars merely for being captured. All those posthumous winners of the medal from the past must be turning over in their graves.

Bob McDaniels
MGySgt., USMC (Ret.)
LaConner

In my years in uniform, I saw the "dumbing down" of the awarding of medals, where criteria was watered to the extent that justification didn't matter much. Its an Officers way of telling his subordinates that he's a really caring guy/gal and he'll get that medal for them. Sad. I hope the concept does not catch on in the Marine Corps.

bless their hearts but Ms. Lynch and her peers did not meet the requirements to receive this award. It's propaganda/publicity for the repugs who got us into this mess.

It's kinda ironic that Lynch is the only soldier named in the letter, and hence, by implication, the one whose honor is being impugned. Nothing there about the dishonor that should attach to the chain of command for perpetrating such a stunt.

Remember the Navy plane that was captured by China in 2001? It's whole crew was awarded medals. Seems under G DUHbya all you need to get decorated is to be captured.

returned (including the black female who was shot in both ankles) be awarded the bronze star?

Or will they be getting the brown asterisk? (think about it; looks like an airtight orifice). Complete with instructions on where to kiss.

...the other soldiers that were POWs have already received their awards. One received a Silver Star for his efforts to fight the Iraqis
with weapons that kept on jamming, the others received Bronze Stars and they all received the POW Medal, and the ones who were wounded received the Purple Heart.

According to the requirements for the award of the Bronze Star, PFC Lynch should not have received it. She was wounded as a result of her
vehicle crashing into a 5 ton tractor/trailer, after the vehicle she was in was hit by an RPG. She did nothing meritorious, now she did
earn the Purple Heart for wounds received in combat, and the POW Medal
for being captured.

And while her chain of command is resposible, if she had any sense of
honor she would return the Bronze Star. But don't look for it to happen, because the one thing that has no meaning in the military any
more is honor and integrity.

You know, the 3 guys who got snatched who never got a .50 cal shot off?

Can't change it now. It is NOT Lynch's fault, either.

Due to misinterpretation of gender in Iraqi comm intercepts:


link http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/27/wjess27.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/07/27/ixworld.html/news/2003/07/27/wjess27.xml

Seemed to me that they were handing out Bronze Stars to the 507th bunch like they were National Defense Service Medals. Not the first time; too bad that it is not uncommon when the brass have their needs.

Probably the article is right, and they don't want to bring any focus to his being left behind, if that happened.

I am glad she is ok, and safe
but she is NO hero, and does not deserve that medal
What about all of the other POW's and all of the soldiers
who will never be coming home
This is just a staged event by this misadministration.





Commander Lawson "Red" Ramage took the USS Parche into a nighttime
battle against dozens of ships, staying on the surface and sinking
scores of them, he recieved the Medal of Honor
Now that is a Hero

On Jessica Lynch: I think she's a real hero. Not because she was captured; not because she may or may not have been beaten up - there seems to be a difference of opinion on whether her injuries were caused by the accident or by rifle butts; and not because she was rescued (or maybe not); but because:

1) When she was in Walter Reed, after weeks of silence, the Army said she was suffering from "amnesia." Her father, in a subsequent interview, denied that was the case. Reading between the lines, it seems obvious that her "amnesia" stemmed from her refusal to go along with the bullshit story of her rescue the administration
was trying to promote. Think of it: a 19-year-old kid, hospitalized and in pain, showing that kind of moral courage, a courage that has nothing to do with guns and killing. This is heroism in the best and truest sense of the word.

2) At her homecoming, she thanked her family and her friends. She thanked the governor of West Virginia and Senator Rockefeller, both Democrats. She thanked the staff of Walter Reed. She thanked the Iraqis who helped her. She spoke fondly of Lori Piestawa and the others who lost their lives in the ambush that resulted in her capture. One person not mentioned in her speech? President Junior, our very own Commander-in-Thief.

3) Notice also that Junior, who usually can't wait to bask in the glow of such celebrities, has not come within a country mile of Private Lynch. Her medals, a Bronze Star, POW medal, and Purple Heart, were awarded to her at her homecoming, not at the White House, as one might expect. For such a national hero, wouldn't
you expect at least a bedside visit while she was at Walter Reed from Smirky? But noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, not a sign, not even so much as a phone call.

To me, that tends to confirm that my Reason No. 1 (see above), may be accurate. I say Jessica deserves a shot of Chinaco. How about it, Bart?

Ann from Philly

I can dig it. I enjoy the bloody rose-colored view I've achieved of most everything lately.

That little girl deserves a medal just for keeping her mouth shut. I would never be able to do that. She also deserves, now that she is on the mend, an opportunity to "cold cock" the chimp. There can be no excuse for taking advantage of any soldier like this. No one signs up to be used, abused, and publicly insulted for his country by his country.

:argh:

Seems a few years ago, Congress was moving to limit the number of Bronze Stars because of abuses after Kosovo.

http://www.pstripes.com/ed102700i.html

Of course, now that we're fighting Mr. Bush's War, those more stringent criteria went right out the window.

He gave out more medals than we had troops in the heroic, brave, invasion of that empire Grenada with 88,000 residents and 10,000 BB guns.

Not widely known, I'm sure...

"There were 18 MEDALS OF DIS-HONOR awarded to members of the 7th Calvary (Custers old outfit) for the massacre of 350 innocent men, women, and little children at Cankpe Opi, in 1890." -- http://www.woptura.com/

There's no meaning to military medals...

sw

scum sucking feces face spoiled lying American rich shit cockroach!
------

(Tell me how this could be covered up so long? I guess the same way Junior's AWOL. And I've still say Junior is unable to fly solo and has never flown solo! I've never see a report, pictures, or a trustworthy person who has said they've seen him fly. I heard reference to a report of a flight instructor who was scared to death of Junior flying and terminated the flight. I don't know where the story/link is now.)

Based on the crew's firsthand account, authors Martin Caidin and Edward Hymoff painted a vivid picture of how the B-26 bomber -- hobbled by a failed generator -- limped back to base, fending off attacking Japanese fighters, using its crippled guns and evasive maneuvers.

In the book, Johnson is described as "cool as ice" and "laughing" in the face of a withering attack by Japanese Zeros.

"Bullets were singing through the plane all about us," waist gunner Lillis Walker told the authors, who are now dead. "We were being hit by those cannon shells, and he was -- well -- just calm and watching everything."

The passage was a gripping account of courage under fire -- except, according to the sole surviving crew member -- it was pure fiction.

"No way," said retired Army Staff Sgt. Bob Marshall. "No, that story was made up, put in there in my mind by the author of the book. 'Cause we never seen Zero, was never attacked. Nothing."

"The Mission" authors portrayed Marshall, a 19-year-old gunner on Johnson's plane, as overcoming the loss of electrical power by using brute strength to aim his guns against the Japanese.

But Marshall insists it never happened.

"That was something I would never forget if I had to do that," Marshall said. "We never got attacked. I had no reason to swing my guns, my turret. Them was built-up stories."

Marshall said he remembers meeting the young Navy officer who flew along on his plane that day but didn't know who he was then and didn't learn until years later that Johnson received the Silver Star for the flight. For years, he said he quietly disputed the published account in private conversations and occasionally in public, but almost no one paid attention.

"If that so-called observer, LBJ that day, got it, the whole crew should have gotten it," Marshall said. "That's the third-highest award you can get."

Did plane come under fire?

Historian and aviation writer Barrett Tillman has long contended that Johnson's plane turned back well before it could have engaged the enemy.

"Johnson, I think, to his credit, was willing to put himself in harm's way for whatever reason," Tillman said, "but about 80 miles southwest of the target, his aircraft developed generator trouble and was forced to turn back."

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/johnson.silver.star/story/storypage.html
(The only time you'll see me post a CNN Whore article.)

and this is straight from the Department of Defense website, which identifies the casualties whenever they are found/identified.

Those POWs returned not long after she was "rescued" were from the very same convoy and the very same attack (3/23/2003, one of the bloodiest days for the US in the "Operation Iraqi Liberation" war).

Guess that Army Spc. Shoshana Nyree Johnson, 30, of El Paso, Texas, may have had some insight into what happened to Jessica Lynch, which didn't jibe with the "blood, guts, and glory" story that was painted for JL.

Also noticed was that the other "brouhaha" over a KIA dealt with everybody's favorite mountain namesake, Army Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, of Tuba City, Ariz. Same convoy, same convoy attack. JL nearly gets the TV Movie of the Week, Piestewa gets a lot of animosity posthumosly for somebody wanting to honor her.