Can We Handle the Truth? (5/24/03)

by Dean Hartwell

At the Oscars this past March, Michael Moore told us that we live in "fictitious times" with a "fictitious president" elected by "fictitious election results" sending people off to a war for "fictitious reasons."  For that, some members of the audience began to boo him.

The funny thing is, the United States was founded upon some fictions.  We have the story of Nathan Hale, a colonial spy in the Revolutionary War.  He supposedly said after his capture by the British, "I only regret that I have but one life to give to my country."

I'd like to know who revealed to the world that he said these words right before his hanging.  The British?  No, they had no reason to spread information that would inspire the colonialists.  The colonialists?  No, there would have been no reason for a colonial sympathizer to be present at such a time.  Thus, the Nathan Hale story is fiction.

We have also heard about Paul Revere's legendary midnight ride in the same war.  The legend has it that Revere acted to warn the colonialists that the British were coming.

But if the midnight ride of Paul Revere is true, why did the story gain no attention until Henry Wadsworth wrote his poem, Paul Revere's Ride, eighty-five years later?  Once again, we have been conned.

Now, in hearing the story of Private Jessica Lynch, it looks as though we have been fooled again.  The official story, given to us by the Washington Post and others in the media, tells us that Private Lynch received stabbings and gunshot wounds by the Iraqi army and that U.S. forces rescued her from an Iraqi hospital.  In fact, the Post went as far as to say that "she was fighting to the death" and that she "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained" her injuries.

According to Robert Scheer in a recent column, Private Lynch was neither shot nor stabbed.  She instead suffered injuries when her Jeep overturned.

The media widely reported that an Iraqi man witnessed a guard beat Lynch.  This man then allegedly reported it to the U.S. military to help them find her.

But Scheer says this account is dubious.  In exchange for his efforts, the United States government brought him here and granted him political asylum.  A company owned by Rupert Murdoch (whose media outlets hyped the war) gave him a $500,000 book contract.

As for the "rescue" of Lynch, eyewitness Dr. Anmar Uday says that "there was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.  So much for the rescue.

Where is the outrage over these and other lies by our media?  It seems that we have indeed slipped into "fictitious" times as Moore says.

I fear that we cling to our "heroes" like Hale, Revere and the Lynch "rescuers" because we lack the courage to become heroes ourselves.

Archives