Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
April 2, 2003 -- Page: S4653

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about joy and also apprehension. In Palestine, WV, they are celebrating the rescue yesterday of PFC Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital. I am sure most people who watch C-SPAN have also seen the incredible pictures of that operation, seeing our Navy SEALs, our Army special forces, our Marines teaming up to go in and take a hospital because they had information that some of our prisoners of war might be there. It was a great act of courage on their part. We are all celebrating the return of Jessica Lynch. In her Army hometown of El Paso, TX, they are celebrating. Her rescue has given hope and comfort to the families of the other missing or captured members of Fort Bliss's 507th Maintenance Company that they, too, might be returned to their homes and families.

Retired MSgt Claude Johnson, father of prisoner of war SP Shoshana Johnson, was thrilled to learn PFC Jessica Lynch had been found. I quote:

I am very, very, very glad that Jessica has been returned and that she is safe. As I have said previously, it is not just about Shoshana. It's about all the prisoners who are over there, and I hope and pray that each and every one of them can come home safe, just like Jessica did. The rescue of Lynch gives everybody hope that the rest of [those missing or captured] will be returned.

I talked to Mr. Johnson early on after Shoshana was taken captive and was shown on Iraqi television. She is a former Army personnel person. I was able to share with him the great attention that all of us are giving to all of those prisoners of war and missing in action. I told him that everything would be done to find them and to rescue them if possible. We hope this is the first of good news. But we also know that our forces are doing everything possible to determine if there are others there and also to try to get them home if they are.

We commend the brave marines and special ops forces and the SEALs who were involved in this dramatic rescue. As details come out, I know we will be even more proud of what they have achieved. Now we hope that in the days ahead there will be other good news for those families of soldiers from Fort Bliss and Fort Hood; that they, too, will be reunited with their families.

All of America is riveted on that wonderful story, but we also know there is more news to come, and we will wait anxiously to hear about others.

I also want to take time to discuss personal stories we get from the field because the press over there is seeing the individual sacrifices our young men and women in the military are making that show so much about our values. I want to share one of those vignettes. Then I want to ask my friend and colleague from Idaho to also do the same because he, too, has troops from Idaho in the field.

This morning I start by talking about CPT Chris Carter. This comes from Chris Tomlinson, the Associated Press, from Hindiyah, Iraq. I want to show this picture because it illustrates exactly what these forces are doing. This is a story that goes with this picture. You see in this picture a woman in a black veil sitting on a bridge. Here are the American troops who are trying to take this bridge.

``We've got to get her off that bridge,'' he said.

Capt. Chris Carter winced at the risks his men would have to take. Engaged in a raid on this Euphrates River town, they were battling for a bridge when, through the smoke, they saw the elderly woman. She had tried to race across the bridge when the U.S. soldiers arrived, but was caught in crossfire.

At first they thought she was dead, like the man sprawled in the dust nearby. But during breaks in the gunfire that whizzed over her head, she sat up and waved for help.

Carter, a 32-year old Army Ranger, ordered his Bradley Fighting Vehicle to move forward while he and two other men ran behind it. They took cover behind the bridges' iron beams. Carter tossed a smoke grenade for more cover and approached the woman, who was crying and pointing at a wound on her hip.

She wore a black abayah, a robe common among older women in the countryside. Blood soaked through the fabric onto the pavement around her.

Medics put the woman on a stretcher and into an ambulance; Carter stood by, providing cover with his M-16 automatic rifle. Then she was gone, and the battle raged on for the town of 80,000 about 50 mile south of Baghdad.

By the end of the day, the Army unit would fight street to street, capture or kill scores of Iraqui soldiers, blow up a Baath Party headquarters and destroy heaps of ammunition and mortars. No US. soldiers were killed, but from the beginning officers in the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment described the mission as ``hairy.''

``Yeah, hold a strategic bridge with one infantry company that has only two platoons--a hell of a mission,'' Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp, the battalion commander, said with a smile.