WASHINGTON, 16 November 2003 — It’s clear by now that there was a huge amount of misreporting by the media of the March 23 ambush of an army convoy in Nassiriyah, Iraq.
Fueled by erroneous information from an unknown source, reporters went with the story that US Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a soldier attached to a maintenance company from Fort Bliss, Texas, heroically fought off Iraqi attackers before succumbing to injuries she sustained in combat. The story, which was widely reported and which I repeated in one of my columns, turned Jessica Lynch into a national heroine. A million-dollar book contract and a TV movie followed.
This story has since been proved totally false. Lynch’s injuries were in fact sustained when her military Humvee crashed. And the real hero of that day turned out to be Pfc. Patrick Miller. After seeing a group of Iraqi soldiers trying to assemble a mortar, which could have killed all of his remaining comrades, Miller repeatedly fired until he had killed them all. To her credit, Lynch has admitted that she was no hero, and has expressed embarrassment over being portrayed as one. But now allegations have come from the family of Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, who also was wounded and taken prisoner that day, that the army is playing favorites in awarding disability benefits.
According to news reports, Johnson was shot in both ankles during the ambush, and an army board has recommended that, as a result of her injuries, she be discharged and paid a disability benefit equal to 30 percent of her monthly salary. This amount upset her family, because they’d heard that Lynch received an 80 percent disability benefit.
Claude Johnson, Shoshana’s father, told The Washington Post he thought this showed there was a double standard. He suggested that the unequal amount of media attention given to Lynch, compared with that given to his daughter, explained why his daughter didn’t get her due. Johnson is reportedly suffering from depression and physical discomfort as a result of the attack.
The family has engaged the Rev. Jesse Jackson to intercede with the army to get higher benefits for Johnson, and Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has accused the army of treating the two soldiers differently. The subtext is that Lynch is being treated better because she’s emerged as the army’s poster girl in the media, while Johnson, Miller and the other survivors have gotten relatively little publicity. Beyond that is the subtext of race — Lynch is white and Johnson is black. It’s hard to say if there’s any merit to these charges. The army absolutely denies that publicity or race influenced its decision about what benefits the soldiers would receive. ‘’The army rates each soldier according to his or her situation,” said Martha Rudd, an army spokeswoman, explaining that disability benefits are determined by the extent of a soldier’s injury and how much it is likely to interfere with her future ability to make a living.
‘’I think the real disparity here has been in the reporting on the two cases,” she told me. Army privacy rules don’t permit her to compare the injuries sustained by the two soliders. But news reports said Johnson was shot in both ankles, while Lynch suffered a head injury and broken bones in her right arm, right leg, thighs and ankle.
If Lynch’s injuries are far more substantial than Johnson’s, then I can understand the reason for the higher benefits. If Johnson’s overall physical and mental shape is just as debilitating, however, then she should get equal benefits. It’s impossible to know, however, without seeing the medical evaluations of the two soldiers. It was the media that made a star of Lynch, while neglecting the role of officers such as Miller and Johnson. Lynch had the perfect image, too — small town, female, cute and blond — while Johnson did not. The army is no more immune to the enticements of good publicity than any other arm of the government, and it’s gotten a whole lot of mileage out of Lynch. But without more evidence, it’s hard to say whether Johnson is the victim of favoritism by the army, or whether she’s merely on the wrong side of favoritism by the media.
