The debunked claims are that the Americans staged the whole rescue affair with blanks in their guns purely for PR reasons. Fact is, the area around the hospital was dangerous, there was at various times, Fedayeen and Baathists operating out of the hospital itself. And Americans are continually to die everyday from supposedly "safe" areas. Oh, and the blanks in the gun issue is even more absurd. On the one hand, people think the Americans use too much force, but here they are being accused of using too much force AND using blanks?
The only thing that has been cleared up since the original Lynch story is the nature of the wounds, on which we never had any definitive evidence anyway. As always in war, people like to speculate. When I first heard Lynch had been captured and saw her picture, I thought "she'll be raped/molested". Stories of people fighting valiatly, emptying their weapon, etc all hearsay.
IMHO, the BBC's reporting on the blanks issue was completely irresponsible. Not even simple fact checking was done on the nature of "bank" ammo in M4's/M16's. All was based on a single report by a local doctor who claimed they were using blanks. Even discounting a biased eyewitness report, how would a non-arms specialist even know the difference between a gun firing a blank and a real bullet? I've been on firing ranges, and I've had blanks, and I certainly can't tell the difference, unless I looked for bulletholes, or heard ricochets.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I'm sorry, the extraordinary claim that America soldiers would go into a hostile city armed only with blanks in order to record a fake rescue on the basis of a single "eyewitness" demands alot more evidence and effort.
The claims that the hospital area was "safe" have also since been debunked, and if YOU were a soldier in Iraq, would you go into an area without weapons just because some Iraqi told you it was safe, even though Iraqis have been surrendering and pretending to cooperate and then turning around and ambushing your colleagues?
When SWAT teams in the US break down the doors of computer hackers to arrest them with full body armor and guns, do you think they are doing it to record a great show?
When they did the same thing to Elian Gonzoles in Florida, think it's for a positive media spin? No, the commanders responsible for the safety of men plan missions as conservative as possible to safe guard those men first.
The BBC's trusting of a single eyewitness report, or even eyewitness reports at all on this issue has vastly lowered their credibility in my eyes. A claim on bullets fired vs blanks can be solved very easy by any ballistics/forensics expert. UK media seems very tabloidish (mirror, guardian, independent, et al) IMHO, BBC was the only one near semi-decent.
