Iraqis risked their lives for me, says Lynch

THE authorised biography of Private Jessica Lynch debunks early myths that American troops waged a daring rescue to save her, and describes a team of Iraqi doctors as gentle caretakers who worked at their own risk to keep her alive.

I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, published yesterday, suggests camera-toting American fighters met no resistance as they rushed a Nasiriyah hospital April 1 to retrieve the prisoner of war.

The biography, by former New York Times writer Rick Bragg, discredits stories from the war's first days that Lynch shot at her Iraqi captors, and that the Iraqi hospital was hostile territory that posed grave danger to Lynch's rescuers.