“On March 23, 2003, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy bumbled into the military city of Nasiriyah, Iraq. In the ensuing chaos, the Humvee that Private Jessica Lynch was riding in crashed, and she was badly hurt. Iraqi forces took her to a nearby civilian hospital and on the night of April 1 [2003] a Special Ops team mounted a rescue (which was conveniently videotaped). The subsequent story of Private Lynch–‘a petite blond supply clerk [who] fearlessly mows down Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she runs out of ammo, whereupon she is shot, stabbed, captured, tortured and raped’–was concocted by Jim Wilkinson, a [President] Bush loyalist who was pulling double-duty as the director of the Office of Strategic Communications for Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Iraq-Afghanistan theater. Wilkinson fed the story to the Washington Post among others and, as [author Jon] Krakauer says, ‘sat back, and watched his fabulation go viral.’ ”
– Dan Neil, “‘Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman’ by Jon Krakauer,” The Los Angeles Times, Sep. 11, 2009