Political Skullduggery

The bullshittery about Jessica Lynch fighting off her Iraqi attackers with a pair of revolvers was a dead giveaway that this was a manufactured story to rally the home front. In some versions, she was armed with pearl-handled revolvers -- just like Patton.

A US House committee announced yesterday that it would hold hearings on misleading military statements that followed the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch in Iraq.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said an April 24 hearing, titled "Misleading Information from the Battlefield," would be part of its investigation into whether there was a strategy to mislead the public.

The plan comes two weeks after the Pentagon released the findings of its own investigations into Tillman's death, and three years after he was killed.

The committee has been quietly investigating the case since then and decided to add Lynch to the scope of its probe. It will "examine why inaccurate accounts of these two incidents were disseminated, the sources and motivations for the accounts, and whether the appropriate administration officials have been held accountable," the panel said on its website. ...

Lynch, as a 21-year-old Army supply clerk, became one of the most visible faces of the war when she was rescued from an Iraqi hospital after being captured by Iraqi forces on April 1, 2003. She had been among six members of her convoy captured during an attack; 11 US soldiers were killed during the fighting.

Her videotaped rescue by special forces branded Lynch a hero at a time the US war effort seemed bogged down. It also stirred complaints of government media manipulation.