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‘Why I Risked My Life’ - Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief for Jessica Lynch

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dArKeR Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 07:37 AM
Original message
‘Why I Risked My Life’ - Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief for Jessica Lynch
MOHAMMED ODEH Al-Rehaief, 33, a lifelong resident of the city of Nasiriya, was among those desperately hoping for the end of Saddam’s regime. So when the Iraqi lawyer spotted a young, female American prisoner of war in a local hospital, he decided to do what he could to help her. Her name, he would later discover, was Jessica Lynch. Al-Rehaief made two perilous passages across no man’s land in a bid to tell U.S. forces about Lynch. His car was showered with shrapnel as fighting raged between U.S. Marines and Iraqi troops. Al-Rehaief was hit in the face and, he says, has permanently lost vision in his left eye.
The lawyer’s tip-off enabled American soldiers to rescue Lynch and he and his family were granted political asylum in the United States. In recent months, he has signed a six-figure book contract with HarperCollins, consulted on a movie about the Lynch rescue and taken a job as a consultant at Livingston Group, the Washington D.C. lobbying firm run by former GOP Rep. Bob Livingston.

http://msnbc.com/news/986663.asp?0cl=c1

And Jessica blows him off!
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Media_Lies_Daily Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 08:02 AM
Response to Original message
1. Just like the Energizer Bunny...
...my "BS"-meter won't stop buzzing on this "story"...

BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
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BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT!
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Ress1 Donating Member (324 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 08:13 AM
Response to Original message
2. On the face, this is sad & disappointing.
I can't imagine a reason important enough for her to snub him. Something very strange about this whole Jessica Lynch story and how she has acted since it all started. Some facts are obviously not being disclosed.
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DoctorMyEyes Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 08:50 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. maybe because he's a liar?
and a tool of the machine that is trying to use her for propoganda purposes
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Say_What Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 09:29 AM
Response to Reply #3
5. BINGO!! Someone who can think. Congratulations!!
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Say_What Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 09:32 AM
Response to Reply #2
6. Why is the PROPAGANDA MACHINE giving this so much air time?
Find out the truth that was reported on Democracy Now! two weeks ago.

<clips>

PR Specialist of Debunked Persian Gulf War Incubator Story Promotes New Book on Lynch "Rescue"

“Expect lots of media hype soon over the first Jessica Lynch-related book by Iraqi Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief. According to some reports he told U.S. Marines the location of the captured Private Lynch. He and his family were then granted U.S. asylum. Along with the chance for U.S. citizenship, al-Rehaief received $300,000 from Rupert Murdoch's Harper Collins for his new book about the Lynch rescue. He also was given a job at the Livingston Group, a high-powered D.C. lobby firm. His book "Because Each Life Is Precious: Why an Iraqi Man Came to Risk Everything for Pvt. Jessica Lynch" is being promoted by his Livingston Group colleague Lauri Fitz-Pegado. She is infamous for her work at Hill & Knowlton PR in 1990 coaching the Kuwaiti girl called "Nayirah" in her shocking but phony testimony on Congressional hill that she'd seen Iraqi soldiers murdering Kuwaiti babies. That stunt helped propel the U.S. to war against Iraq in 1991. Fitz-Pegado's client was the ruling family of Kuwait and the baby-killing claims were later shown to be false. The new book is well timed since it will precede by a few weeks Jessica Lynch's own book, half-a-million copies of which will hit bookstores on Veterans Day, November 11th.”

* John Stauber, co-founder of PR Watch and co-author of the book, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq. which takes a look at how the Bush administration’s highly successful public relations campaign sold the Iraqi war to the American public.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/17/1530239

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Media_Lies_Daily Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 09:54 AM
Response to Reply #2
8. I'd like more facts on why three soldiers from her "rescue team"...
...are now dead. One was shot and killed by a drive-by shooter, one was shot in the back while in combat in Iraq, and one was killed in a traffic accident back in the states. What's all that about?

And the star of the show was awarded a Bronze Star for actions taken while unconscious??

And now we have this story that stinks to high heaven.

My "BS"-meter has burned out.
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rocktivity Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 10:19 AM
Response to Reply #2
11. Either dueling consciences or dueling books
Jessica may have been "advised" not to meet with Al-Rehaief since he's promoting a book and she will be, too. She may have decided that she didn't want the meeting to be turned into a big media event. Or maybe she remembers more than she's telling and knows the Al-Rehaief story is a phony.


rocknation
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Say_What Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 09:28 AM
Response to Original message
4. SPIN, SPIN, SPIN, SPIN OF THE DAY
Why is the US propaganda machine giving this so much airtime?

Why was this guy granted asylum only two weeks in the US?

Why was he given a $300,000 book deal by RUPERT MURDOCH?

Why was he given a a job at the Livingston Group, a high-powered D.C. lobby firm?

The most important question: Why is Lauri Fitz-Pegado PROMOTING this book?

Lauri Fitz-Pegado is the one who coached "Nayirah" who gave phony testimony on Capitol Hill that she'd seen Iraqi soldiers murdering Kuwaiti babies. BUSH I went on to use this to con the US public into the GULF WAR. Turned out that Nayirah a member was the ruling family of Kuwait and the baby-killing claims were later shown to be false.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/17/1530239

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soup Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 09:37 AM
Response to Original message
7. His car being "showered with shrapnel"
shouldn't have been a problem since he wasn't in it. :eyes:

>snip<
Mohammed said he told his wife to take their daughter to his father's house for safety, and then set off on foot to find the American troops he had heard were occupying the edges of Nasiriyah.

"This was very dangerous for me because American soldiers shoot," he said, throwing up his hands in the air to show how he carefully approached what turned out to be the U.S. Marines.
>snip<
He walked back, with no taxis in sight, even as U.S. jets bombed parts of the city of more than 500,000 people. "Boom, boom. I walked under bombs. Fire, Fire," Mohammed recalled.

He did the same thing the next day to report back to the Marines.
full article cached at Google

Help was six miles away in the desert, where Mohammed, walking all the way, finally encountered a Marine patrol. And that, he related, was only the beginning of his travails: after giving his account to officers, he was sent back to the hospital twice for more information, returning with five hand-drawn maps and a count of the Fedayeen guards: 41.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/896296.asp

Many more out there. But figure enough is enough.
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veganwitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 10:04 AM
Response to Original message
9. about her blowing him off
Edited on Thu Oct-30-03 10:05 AM by veganwitch
maybe, and i might be too opptimistic on this, she knows her story is a scam and doesnt want to get bogged down in all the bullshit.

remember her dad saying that she had none of the stab wounds or amnesia that the pentagon said she had?

doesnt anyone know if shes getting "help" writing her book?


both jessica and Al-rehaief are getting used by the pentagon to trump up a story.

edit: ok apparently doctormyeyes said all this already.
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Say_What Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 10:13 AM
Response to Original message
10. Promoter of the book, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, LIED FOR BUSH I
<clips>

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUCH FAIRCLOTH

..The Commerce Department has a lot of questions to answer about its role leading up to the Gulf War. It is also time that we in the Banking Committee revisit a current Commerce Department nominee—Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who played a crucial role in shaping public opinion toward U.S. involvement, and she did it by personally orchestrating perjured testimony before Congress.

Mr. Chairman, in 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of their country, the Kuwaiti government in exile formed Citizens for a Free Kuwait. They hired the lobbying firm of Hill and Knowlton to influence public opinion in this country toward entering the conflict. Lauri Fitz-Pegado was in charge of the effort.

Her strategy was to use alleged witnesses to atrocities, to tell stories of human rights violations in occupied Kuwait. Using their testimony, she orchestrated what has come to be known as the Baby Incubator Fraud.

She first coached a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only at the time as Naira, to testify before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from hospital respirators. Naira claimed to be a refugee who had been working as a volunteer in a Kuwaiti hospital throughout the first few weeks of the Iraqi occupation. She said that she bad seen them take babies out of the incubators, take the incubators, and leave the babies "on the cold floor to die."

Naira's emotional testimony riveted human rights organizations, the news mediums, and the Nation. That incident was cited by six Members of the U.S. Senate as reasons to go to war with Iraq.

<http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/hearing/hearing_s04.htm>



<clips>
From Corporate Watch:

Hill & Knowlton

...3.2 Governmental Links

Involvement with the CIA

From the mid 1950s onward H&K began to open offices all around the world. According to Susan Trento, author of “The Power House”, a biography of Hill and Knowlton exec Robert Keith Gray, they opened many overseas offices “on the advice of friends, including then CIA director Allen W Dulles.” Gray also used to brag about checking major decisions personally with CIA director William Casey, whom he considered a close personal friend. “Hill and Knowlton’s overseas offices were perfect cover for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers,” revealed Robert T Crowley, a CIA official. George Worden, another H&K executive commented that he “used to kid at Hill and Knowlton about our office in Kuala Lumpur, because nobody would tell me what it did, and I swore it had to be a CIA front.”

Lauri Fitz-Pegado from 1977 to 1982, worked at the United States Information Agency, first in the personnel department, then as a foreign service officer. In 1982 she joined Gray & Co which was purchased by H&K in 1986<26>. She headed H&K’s Kuwait account in 1991 and in 1994 she moved back to the White House as Assistant Secretary and Director General of the United States Foreign and Commercial Service under President Clinton.

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/profiles/hk/hk3.htm


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Say_What Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 10:33 AM
Response to Original message
12. Mohammed's new employer: GOP Lobbyist for IRAQI JOBS
Edited on Thu Oct-30-03 10:34 AM by Say_What
<clips>

GOP lobbyists hope their ties pay off in Iraq

WASHINGTON — Some of Washington's top Republican lobbyists are counting on ties to the Bush administration, the congressional leadership and the Iraqi provisional government to turn the embattled country into a major new profit center.

"It's like a huge pot of honey that's attracting a lot of flies," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

... Another lobbying firm run by former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., is representing well-placed Iraqi families seeking to form business alliances with U.S. and foreign companies interested in setting up operations in the country. The firm is exploring working with a Jordanian pharmaceutical company and an Iraqi business family to produce antibiotics for Iraq.

The Livingston Group also is working on behalf of De La Rue, a British printing and paper company that has won a contract to print some of Iraq's currency, and now seeks to produce secure travel documents for the fledgling government. Anthony "Toby" Moffett Jr., a former Democratic representative from Connecticut who works with Livingston, said his firm's first task was to "make sure the people in decision-making positions knew the severity of the problem as regards to security documentation. We had to try to convince the U.S. government they need to fix this issue sooner rather than later."



On edit: link: <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001758316_iraqgop04.html>
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Say_What Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-30-03 10:56 AM
Response to Original message
13. Mohammed's employer: TOP CONTRIBUTOR to 2004 ELECTION CYCLE
Hellooooo, anybody getting the picture about this guy and his *book*??

<clips>

Lobbyists: Top Contributors
Election Cycle 2004

19. Livingston Group $79,973 to Dem:30% to Repukes: 70%


http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.asp?Ind=K02
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