{"id":1194,"date":"2003-05-16T16:06:13","date_gmt":"2003-05-17T06:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/05\/16\/firing-blanks\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T08:39:19","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T16:39:19","slug":"firing-blanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/05\/16\/firing-blanks\/","title":{"rendered":"Firing blanks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:14656,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.guardian.co.uk\\\/Iraq\\\/Story\\\/0,2763,956255,00.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.theguardian.com\\\/Iraq\\\/Story\\\/0,2763,956255,00.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:14657,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.thismodernworld.com\\\/weblog\\\/mtarchives\\\/week_2003_05_11.html#000614&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20130113212315\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.thismodernworld.com\\\/weblog\\\/mtarchives\\\/week_2003_05_11.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 01:36:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 01:36:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>The rescue of Jessica Lynch is making the rounds again, only this time with more details &#8212; according to one of the doctors at the hospital, the troops entering the hospital were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Iraq\/Story\/0,2763,956255,00.html\" title=\"The truth about Jessica\">firing blanks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team&#8217;s Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. &#8220;He asked: &#8216;Are there any Fedayeen over there?&#8217; and I said, &#8216;No&#8217;.&#8221; All the same, the next day &#8220;America&#8217;s finest warriors&#8221; descended on the building.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;We heard the noise of helicopters,&#8221; says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. \\&#8221;We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, &#8216;Go, go, go&#8217;, with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show &#8211; an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.&#8221; All the time with the camera rolling.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Admittedly, this is one man&#8217;s unconfirmed word &#8212; but given that real bullets would leave holes that blanks wouldn&#8217;t, the claim could be disproved easily enough that I&#8217;m not sure he&#8217;d make it up. We&#8217;ll probably never know for sure, though.<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thismodernworld.com\/weblog\/mtarchives\/week_2003_05_11.html#000614\" title=\"Triumph of the willing suspension of disbelief\">Tom Tomorrow<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rescue of Jessica Lynch is making the rounds again, only this time with more details &mdash; according to one of the doctors at the hospital, the troops entering the hospital were firing blanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-1194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}