From today's Guardian (UK), "Private Jessica says President is misusing her 'heroism'":

When American Private Jessica Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital last April, President George Bush's administration and much of the US media was gripped by a dramatic tale of blonde, all-American heroism.

The story reaches fever pitch this week with the publication of Lynch's autobiography, a dramatised TV documentary, interviews and a Vanity Fair cover story.

Beneath the gloss of the US media and the machinations of an administration eager to show a 'good news' angle of the Iraq conflict against the reality of a rising body count, Lynch has become a metaphor not for the heroism of pretty young Americans captured by a devilish foreign enemy, but for the confusion that has marked Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom from the start.

Misgivings characterising Lynch's story are coming to a head: last week she accused the administration of manipulating her story for propaganda, saying she was not a heroine at all; accusations that she'd been raped were disputed by appalled Iraqi doctors who first treated her, and the army was accused of insensitivity and racism for awarding Lynch a full disability pension while others from her ambushed maintenance company, including Shoshana Johnson, the black cook wounded and captured by Iraqis, will receive barely a third of Lynch's discharge package.

And while we're at it, here's a hiss for the media organizations who were so quick to buy into this, and make a buck off it during Sweeps Week.