Jessica Lynch, Private Citizen

Jessica Lunch has quietly (and seemingly without the benefit of a media circus) returned to civilian life. Congratulations; my personal wish for this young lady is that her life be all she desires it to be. Some early indications are that her immediate future will be anything but mundane, as elements of her story seem to gravitate to the ironic.

From the Parkersburg News and Sentinel:

Pfc. Lynch medically discharged from Army

PALESTINE-That's just Jessica Lynch now, thank you very much.
The familiar prefix Pfc. (private first class) has been dropped from the name of perhaps the most famous soldier of the war in Iraq. As of Friday, Jessica Lynch is a civilian once more.

"She has in fact been honorably discharged from the United States Army and is a civilian," Lynch's attorney Stephen Goodwin said in a telephone message left with The Parkersburg News & Sentinel Wednesday.

Lynch has not spoken publicly about her ordeal, but has said through a spokesman she plans to tell her story in a book to be published by the end of the year.

''Like any citizen, she is now free to enter into a contract,'' Goodwin told the AP.
Goodwin said Lynch had not signed a book deal with anyone as of Wednesday, although Pulitzer Prize winning author reporter Rick Bragg has been a guest at the Lynch home to do research.

Bragg resigned from the New York Times in May in the aftermath of a plagiarism scandal at the paper stemming from Jayson Blair's coverage of Lynch's ordeal.

The newspaper published an editor's note saying that a freelancer who had reported the bulk of an unrelated story under Bragg's byline should have received credit. The paper has reported Bragg will be paid $1 million to tell Lynch's story.

NBC plans a TV movie starring Laura Regan that has been developed without Lynch's authorization, while CBS abandoned its plans for a Lynch movie.

No word yet as to whether Bragg will actually write the entire book about Pvt Lynch's forgotten ordeal himself or use ghost writers. However, Bragg did choke up as he stood on the Lynch porch overlooking the tobacco fields and cattle pastures, and declared that he remained optimistic that this project may be his ticket back to the Big Times.