SHOWTIME! "The rescue of Jessica Lynch", page 1

Footage of this rescue has been shown many times on UK TV since the night that it happened.
It's been analysed by BBC SAS correspondants and they all go on the record as saying that it looked like a standard special forces operation. I can't remember seeing a news item that said that US forces came under heavy fire at the hospital. There was a diversionary attack on another target and the rescue mission went in pretty unopposed. What could have been a major Hollywood action scene didn't happen and none of the TV footage that I've seen shows it to be "intense".
The fact that there wasn't a lot of shooting doesn't mean that this was an elaborate hoax. If anything it makes it more of a success - the idea after all, was to rescue Lynch and not lose a US life in the process.
The media were given TV pictures and they were the people who went for the sensationilist headlines. In the eyes of the US government the actual military operation was a military success so they seem justified in their self congratulation. I think the public didn't really understand the nature of a special forces mission. Bred on a diet of Hollywood Navy Seal and Schwarzenegger movies, we imagine every SpecOps mission to be blood and thunder. We were the ones who blew this out of proportion.
The hospital was in enemy held territory. Even the eyewitness says that the Iraqis were there 24 hours before the raid and it would have taken longer than 24 hours to arrange a special forces operation of this nature (even longer if it was a set up). Western elite forces don't just walk up to a building and storm it like in the movies - there's intelligence, planning, logistics, troop training for the particular mission. A lot of highly trained and expensively trained troops went in. I doubt the US government would have risked them just to perpetrate a hoax. Not only that but they could NEVER hope to keep it secret. Special Ops missions are probably the most publicized military media around. If our elite forces go into action WE want to know about it and there are any number of ex-soldiers who took part in those missions who will be shown on TV or will write a book which corroborates with other people who fought by them. The US government knows too well that it wouldn't be able to keep a hoax quiet and it hates humiliation. The Bush administration just sat back and enjoyed the ride as the media awoke the romantacism about special ops that Hollywood instilled in us.

I don't believe Udays story, it's not logical and it uses certain facts to it's advantage.

"Reports claimed that she had stab and bullet wounds and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated."

They overlook the fact that those reports weren't substantiated by the US government but the media took it upon themselves to report it as fact. These reports soon died out though when the media realised that they had made a mountain out of a molehill.

"There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance."

Two days before, the hospital was crawling with Iraqis. This guy doesn't sound pro-US enough to risk smuggling out a US POW to freedom.

The whole article reeks of bias IMO. It seems to be trying to knock down a military operation that was a success, whichever way you look at it. The only way to do this is by claiming that it was a hoax. The difficulty is that, because there are many military details and operational tactics in the Lynch mission, the US govt won't give too much information away. Some people therefore get a free shot at the Bush administration.

Who knows? Maybe the media is trying to draw the government out to tell the whole story of the rescue down to every last detail so it can feed it to us. By questioning it's credibility they will annoy the Bush administration. The TV producers and the newspaper editors know we love anything involving special forces and there is lots of money to be made out of this story. They've had one big pay day from it so far and it can be milked for a lot more.