NASIRIYAH, Iraq - Iraqi doctors who treated former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch dismissed on Friday claims made in her autobiography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.
Although Lynch said she has no memory of the sexual assault, medical records cited in "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" indicate that she was raped and sodomized by her Iraqi captors, according to U.S. media who said they had advance copies. The 207-page book, written with her cooperation by best-selling author Rick Bragg, is scheduled for release Tuesday, Veterans Day.
The book is part of a flurry of attention to Lynch in coming days. ABC will air Diane Sawyer's interview with Lynch Tuesday evening on "Primetime," she will be on the cover of Time magazine, and NBC will broadcast a movie Sunday night based on an Iraqi's account of her ordeal.
The book covers Lynch's experience from March 23 -- when her convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah -- to April 1, when she was evacuated from an Iraqi hospital by U.S. commandos. It was unclear if the book cites American or Iraqi records.
A family spokesman, Stephen Goodwin, confirmed the book alleges Lynch was raped.
Dr. Mahdi Khafazji, an orthopedic surgeon at Nasiriyah's main hospital, performed surgery on Lynch to repair a fractured femur and said he found no signs that she was raped or sodomized.
Khafazji said he examined her extensively and would have detected signs of sexual assault.
Dr. Jamal al-Saeidi -- who examined Lynch at the now disbanded Military Hospital, where she was taken about an hour after the attack -- remembers seeing her motionless body on a bed in the crowded lobby of his hospital.
He said Lynch was fully clothed with her field jacket buttoned up. "Her clothes were not torn, buttons had not come off, her pants were zipped up," al-Saeidi said.
Lynch had lost more than half of her blood because of a 4- to 6-inch wound on the left side of her head, as well as broken limbs that caused internal bleeding, al-Saeidi said.
"We had a few minutes, golden minutes to save her," he said. He rushed her to the operating room, and gave her intravenous fluid and blood and stitched her head wound.
"Why are they saying such things?" said Khodheir al-Hazbar, the deputy director at Saddam Hospital, where Lynch stayed for nine days, until American commandos evacuated her. "We were good to her."
In the interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, Lynch said she has no recollection of a rape. "Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she said.
Lynch told Sawyer she doesn't remember being slapped or mistreated at the hospital, and she recalled one nurse sang to her.
She also accused the military of using her capture and dramatic nighttime rescue to sway public support for the war in Iraq.
Video of U.S. commandos whisking Lynch to a waiting chopper helped cement Lynch's image as a hero. But in the "Primetime" interview to be aired on Tuesday, Lynch told Sawyer there was no reason for her rescue to be filmed.
"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Lynch said. "It's wrong."
That footage of U.S. commandos wheeling a grimacing Lynch to a waiting chopper was among the most dramatic of the war -- and helped cement her image as a female warrior. But Lynch said the true heroes were the soldiers who saved her.
"I'm so thankful that they did what they did; they risked their lives."