But -- and this is the wildest part, as Dr. Harith al-Houssona told the Guardian and the Toronto Star, two days before the American raid, a few of the senior hospital staff attempted to send Jessica back to the Americans in an ambulance. "I told her I will try and help you escape to the American Army," he said, "but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life." They bundled her into an ambulance and instructed the driver to take her to the U.S. checkpoint, just a kilometer away. "But when the ambulance got within 300 meters, they began to shoot," said Dr. al-Houssona. "There wasn't even a chance to tell them, 'We have Jessica. Take her.'"
...
Three days after the raid, an American military doctor showed up at the hospital. He came, he said, to thank them for the superb surgery.

"You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don't you?" Dr. Mudhafer Raazk replied.

Which raises another ticklish question: According to two different reporters, the day before, the raid, a waiter from Nasiriya's al-Diwan restaurant is approached near the hospital by U.S. Special Forces with an Arabic interpreter, and they ask him if any Iraqi troops are still in the hospital. "And I say, 'No, they're all gone,'" the waiter replied.

There's more: Fox News reports that, to confirm Jessica's location, "officials with the Defense Intelligence Agency equipped and trained an Iraqi informant with a concealed video camera. On the day of the raid, the informant walked around the hospital, videotaping entrances and a route to Lynch's room."

If true, wouldn't the military planners have known there were no Iraqi forces inside the hospital when they made the raid? Were the slam-bang commando tactics mostly for show? According to different interviews with the doctors, there were anywhere from one to three cameramen in uniform with the raiding team.

Could we be making a made-for-television movie about a made-for-television movie?

These days, when told of stories that Lynch was abused while in their care, the hospital staff are outraged. Said Nurse Shinah: "This is a lie. But why ask me? Why don't you ask Jessica what kind of treatment she received?"

In fact, the Iraqi accounts of good treatment for Pvt. Lynch were corroborated by Pam Nicolais, a cousin serving as a spokesman for the family, in an interview with the Herald Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va. "That goes along with what Jessi told us," she told the paper.

Yet the same day, Fox News ran the story that Jessica can't remember anything that happened after her unit was ambushed through her 10 days of captivity. "She basically has amnesia and has mentally blocked out the horrible things we strongly believe she went through," one official told Fox.

So there you are, Marvin -- one of the messiest story lines I've ever had to deal with. Over to you.