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05/16/2003 Archived Entry: "Jessica Lynch story gets even more weird..."
Jessica Lynch story gets even more weird...
Maybe the Gulf War was the first 'TV War,' but I think Operation Give-Saddam-Until-10-To Run is the first made for TV War. From The Guardian:
The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team's Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. "He asked: 'Are there any Fedayeen over there?' and I said, 'No'." All the same, the next day "America's finest warriors" descended on the building. "We heard the noise of helicopters," says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.
"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame.
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Al-Houssona had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. "I told her I will try and help you escape to the American Army but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life." He put her in an ambulance and instructed the driver to go to the American checkpoint. When he was approaching it, the Americans opened fire. They fled just in time back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.
Think that's weird? Wait, there's more!!
One of the astute posters on Atrios' blog (which gets the smartest comments in all of Bloghdad for my money) noted that a couple of Jessica-related domain names were reserved on the day that Jetboy gave ol' Saddam the Big Ultimatum:
Domain Name: JESSICALYNCH.NET Created on..............: Mon, Mar 17, 2003
Expires on..............: Wed, Mar 17, 2004
Record last updated on..: Sun, Apr 06, 2003
Domain Name:JESSICALYNCH.ORG
Created On:17-Mar-2003 19:57:52 UTC
Expiration Date:17-Mar-2004 19:57:52 UTC
And those domain registrations have less information than I have ever seen in a WHOIS document.
You can not make this stuff up, folks.
Replies: 8 people speak up
This is infuckingcredible.
Posted by Ivan @ 05/16/2003 08:19 AM NY
Oh...my...God...I. I am totally fucking speechless. I'm trying to wrap my brain around how that oculd happen and NOT be that the whole thing was entirely set up by our government for propaganda purposes even BEFORE teh war started.
I really don't know what to think. I feel like I'm living in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.
Posted by Jason @ 05/16/2003 11:57 AM NY
While I've sampled only a tiny fraction of what can loosely be termed "left wing" blogs, I don't agree with your high opinion of Atrios's blog.
My brief experience of Atrios (about 1 month) leads me to this conclusion: it's akin to an exclusive, lefty country club.
Don't misinterpret my comments, I'm fairly leftist on most issues and I utterly despise the Fratboy and his policies. However, being on the left does not preclude someone from being a snob. And I hate snobs.
Posted by Metropolitan99 @ 05/16/2003 12:33 PM NY
Metro,
IMO, Atrios gets it right. There has to be a reason why he's cited by people like Alterman and Krugman, and there has to be a reason why his blog is consistently in the Top 5 out of some 137,000 weblogs (by comparison, my humble blog rates in the high 1700s.
I agree that sometimes he gets a little 'inside baseball,' but that's the point of blogging - you get to write about what you want to.
And welcome to B3, BTW.
Posted by editor @ 05/16/2003 12:41 PM NY
Dear Blah3 (at least I think that's the correct salutation),
I was unaware of the prominence of Atrios in the Blogshere. I had read about Atrios in the February issue of "The Progressive" and became curious.
I don't question the veracity or relevance of Atrios. However, my experience was that his blog comments section consists of about a dozen "inner-core" contributors with about another dozen "outer-core" commentators.
Now I may be wrong about this, but my distinct impression is that it's a pretty exclusive place where "outsiders" are only marginally welcome. I devoutly believe that the primary goal of all Americans who are horrified at the disturbingly right-wing agenda of our illegal, incoherent president should be to strategize on how best to blunt the Cheney-Bush Junta's efforts at re-election. The implicit "members only" feel to Atrios is not only unhelpful but positively off-putting.
In any event, thanks for your welcome. I enjoy your blog immensely.
Posted by Metropolitan99 @ 05/16/2003 03:23 PM NY
Metro, interesting.. I've commented a couple times over on Atrios' blog and never really got that feeling of being not welcome/outsider. I read it mostly for what he writes and the links he gets. It's definitely a good source for good links to news stories, IMO.
And thanks for the great fodder with this story for my top item in my Friday Political Links today, Mr. Editor Sir. I'm still floored by this...
Posted by Jason @ 05/16/2003 05:33 PM NY
That is pretty freaky, so I did a little digging.
The info for the other sites follows:
Domain Name: JESSICALYNCH.NET
Created on..............: Mon, Mar 17, 2003
Expires on..............: Wed, Mar 17, 2004
Record last updated on..: Sun, Apr 06, 2003
Administrative Contact:
Self
A G
81 Pondfield Road
Bronxville, NY 10708
US
Phone: 646-349-4987
Fax..: 646-349-4987
Email: shenan@golimbu.com
The other site is less forthcoming:
Domain Name:JESSICALYNCH.ORG
Created On:17-Mar-2003 19:57:52 UTC
Last Updated On:17-May-2003 18:23:15 UTC
Expiration Date:17-Mar-2004 19:57:52 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R71-LROR
Status:OK
Registrant ID:71-C
Registrant Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Registrant Street1:Whois Server:whois.register.com
Registrant Street2:Referral URL:www.register.com
Registrant City:N/A
Registrant Postal Code:N/A
Registrant Country:CA
Registrant Email:not@available.org
The 81 Pondfield Road address appears to be small shopping center. The only store I see there that may be related is:
Mail Boxes Etc
81 Pondfield Rd
Bronxville, NY 10708
(914) 779-0140
Though you may find something more else if you look at the list of matches for that address:
http://refdesk.whitepages.com/search/Reverse_Address?search_id=119804614&sort=&alpha_limit=&lower=11
(I'm not sure that address is good unless you have a cookie set for it. If not, try http://refdesk.whitepages.com/ and key in the address.)
The site owner's registered phone number is 646-349-4987, but the area code for Bronxville, NY is 914. I did a reverse search on the phone number but couldn't find the owner; it may be unlisted. The area code 646 is an overlay for the 212/917 area.
The e-mail address is shenan@golimbu.com, so I wondered what golimbu was. It's registered to
Alexander N. Golimbu
12 Meadow Ave
Bronxville, NY 10708
US
but there is no web page at golimbu.com yet. It's a Mac hosting site.
That's all I can find out easily without actually contacting the website owner, a job I'll leave to someone more obnoxious than me. I would not be surprised if they are already inundated with queries from conspiracy freaks like me.
I wouldn't read too much into this just yet, freaky though it is. There is another site called www.jessicalynch.com that is completely unrelated to Pvt. Lynch, and there really are a lot of Jessica Lynches in the US. One search gave me 145 of them. It's a pretty common name. There are also a lot of dates that we might consider suspicious, such as every time Bush said something threatening toward Iraq, which is to say most days since he took office.
Jim Caddell
The Unrepentant Liberal
http://unrepentantliberal.us
PS: AFTER researching this I found this very slow loading website that says pretty much the same thing. Sheesh!
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/lynch.htm
Have fun, guys!
Posted by Jim Caddell @ 05/19/2003 01:29 AM NY
Dontcha know we always solve the mystery AFTER hitting the "Post THis Comment" button. See
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00102.htm
for a pretty likely explanation.
Jim
Posted by Jim Caddell @ 05/19/2003 01:38 AM NY
