TRP: "to rewrite the past"

[pynchonoid]

"There is always some agency like the Ministry of
Truth to deny the memories of others, to rewrite the
past. It has become a commonplace, circa 2003, for
government employees to be paid more than most of the
rest of us to debase history, trivialise truth and
annihilate the past on a daily basis. Those who don't
learn from history used to have to relive it, but only
until those in power could find a way to convince
everybody, including themselves, that history never
happened, or happened in a way best serving their own
purposes - or best of all that it doesn't matter
anyway, except as some dumbed-down TV documentary
cobbled together for an hour's entertainment."
-Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_ 

<http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15018&CFID=7341778&CFTOKEN=90837354>

Robert Scheer 
Creators Syndicate 
05.20.03 	

Saving Private Lynch: take 2
The rescue was pure Hollywood, reportedly a bit of
Pentagon fiction.
In the 1998 film "Wag the Dog," political operatives
employ special editing techniques to create phony
footage that will engender public sympathy for a
manufactured war. Now we find that in 2003 the
real-life Pentagon's ability and willingness to
manipulate the facts make Hollywood's story lines look
tame. After a thorough investigation, the British
Broadcasting Corp. has presented a shocking dissection
of the "heroic" rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, as
reported by the U.S. military and a breathless
American press.

"Her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news
management ever conceived," the BBC concluded—the
polite British way of saying "liar, liar, pants on
fire."

Though the Bush administration's shamelessly
trumped-up claims about Iraq's alleged ties to Al
Qaeda and 9/11 and its weapons of mass destruction
take the cake for deceitful propaganda—grand strategic
lies that allow the United States' seizure of Iraq's
oil to appear to be an act of liberation—the sad case
of Lynch's exploitation at the hands of military
spinners illustrates that the truth once again was a
casualty of war.

Lynch, who says she has no memory of the events in
question, has suffered enough in the line of duty
without being reduced to a propaganda pawn.

Sadly, almost nothing fed to reporters about either
Lynch's original capture by Iraqi forces or her
"rescue" by U.S. forces turns out to be true. Consider
the April 3 Washington Post story on her capture
headlined "She Was Fighting to the Death," which
reported, based on unnamed military sources, that
Lynch "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she
sustained multiple gunshot wounds," adding that she
was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in.

It has since emerged that Lynch was neither shot nor
stabbed, but rather suffered accident injuries when
her vehicle overturned. A medical checkup by U.S.
doctors confirmed the account of the Iraqi doctors,
who said they had carefully tended her injuries, a
broken arm and thigh and a dislocated ankle, in
contrast to U.S. media reports that doctors had
ignored Lynch.

Another report spread by news organizations nationwide
claimed Lynch was slapped by an Iraqi security guard,
and the U.S. military later insisted that an Iraqi
lawyer witnessed this incident and informed them of
Lynch's whereabouts. His credibility as a source,
however, is difficult to verify because he and his
family were whisked to the U.S., where he was
immediately granted political asylum and has refused
all interview requests. His future was assured with a
job with a lobbying firm run by former Republican Rep.
Bob Livingstone that represents the defense industry
and a $500,000 book contract with HarperCollins, a
company owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox network did
much to hype Lynch's story, as it did the rest of the
war.

But where the manipulation of this saga really gets
ugly is in the premeditated manufacture of the rescue
itself, which stains those who have performed real
acts of bravery, whether in war or peacetime.

Eight days after her capture, American media trumpeted
the military's story that Lynch was saved by Special
Forces that stormed the hospital and, in the face of
heavy hostile fire, managed to scoop her up and
helicopter her out.

However, according to the BBC, which interviewed the
hospital's staff, the truth appears to be that not
only had Iraqi forces abandoned the area before the
rescue effort but that the hospital's staff had
informed the U.S. of this and made arrangements two
days before the raid to turn Lynch over to the
Americans. "But as the ambulance, with Pvt. Lynch
inside, approached the checkpoint, American troops
opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital.
The Americans had almost killed their prize catch,"
the BBC reported.

"We were surprised," Dr. Anmar Uday told the BBC about
the supposed rescue. "There was no military, there
were no soldiers in the hospital. It was like a
Hollywood film. [The U.S. forces] cried 'Go, go, go,'
with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the
sound of explosions," Uday said. "They made a show for
the American attack on the hospital—[like] action
movies [starring] Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."

The footage from the raid, shot not by journalists but
by soldiers with night-vision cameras, was fed in real
time to the central command in Qatar. The video was
artfully edited by the Pentagon and released as proof
that a battle to free Lynch had occurred when it had
not. 

This fabrication has already been celebrated by an A&E
special and will soon be an NBC movie. The Lynch
rescue story—a made-for-TV bit of official
propaganda—will probably survive as the war's most
heroic moment, despite proving as fictitious as the
stated rationales for the invasion itself.

If the movies, books and other renditions of "saving
Private Lynch" were to be honestly presented, it would
expose this caper as merely one in a series of
egregious lies marketed to us by the Bush
administration. 

=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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