Where are they now? The faces of the Iraq war five years on

JESSICA LYNCH: The capture and rescue of Jessica Lynch, a US Army private, received huge media attention. The US authorities claimed that she had bravely fought back after being ambushed by Iraqi forces, and then suffered abuse and rape in captivity. Most of these allegations turned out to be untrue, and her "rescue" was stage-managed with US forces firing blanks while they "stormed" a hospital which had, in fact, been abandoned by the Iraqi military. Lynch herself exposed much of the news manipulation after returning to the US, saying that she could not "fight back" because her rifle had jammed, as had those of some of her comrades. She stressed that her treatment by Iraqi medical staff had been excellent and denied that she'd been sexually assaulted. Lynch gave evidence last year before a US Congressional Committee on the topic of official news manipulation and met the family of Pat Tillman, a gridiron football hero who joined up after September 11 and was killed in Afghanistan. The Pentagon claimed at first that he died in action but was later forced to admit that he died from "friendly fire". Lynch joined West Virginia University on a military scholarship, but sought to keep her military past away from public knowledge. In January 2007 she gave birth to a daughter, Dakota Ann, named after her friend and fellow soldier, Lori Ann Piestewa, the first coalition servicewoman to be killed in the Iraq war

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