Peace Team Details | Reports | Messages to
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OUTRAGE IN BAGHDAD
April Hurley, MD
In America, the alert goes: If you're not outraged,
you're not paying attention.
In Bagdhad, at Al Kindi Hospital Emergency, Fatima
Abdullah is screaming in outrage: "Why do you do this
to us??!
Her 8 year old, Fatehah is dead, two other daughters
are on stretchers wounded by a missle that crushed her
uncle's home where they were staying outside Baghdad,
near the Diala Bridge. An extended farming family,
they have suffered with sanctions and ecomonic
devastation shrinking their stock of animals to one
cow, a donkey and chickens; they are barely able to
feed themselves.
Muhammed, the four year old crying in her arms has
cuts from shrapnel and debris criss-crossing the right
side of his face and head, eyelids swollen shut.
Nada Adnan, 13 years old and a student at high school
for girls, states "I wish that God would take Bush.
Why did he do this to us? to me?". She has an open
gash on her right cranium with underlying fracture and
a large, deep shrapnel gauged cut into her upper left
thigh. She has no narcotic relief and cries out as
aides press guaze into her leg wound. 9 year old,
Rana Adnan needs oxygen for a chest laceration and
lung contusion with a concussion, head laceration, and
shrapnel in her left arm.
And then there is Nahla Harbi who was a passenger
driving away from Bagdad with her two year old in her
arms when a military school for boys was hit and the
explosion rolled the car fracturing both of her legs.
Her child sustained head injuries.
Less than 100 meters from Alyermouk Hospital and a
school, bombing crushed the foot of 28 year old man
who was walking outside his home.
And the list keeps going on. A 70 year old man
shopping for food for his family now has a compound
fracture of his left upper arm, chest wound through
his lung requiring a chest tube and making answers and
complaints more dificult.
He has rage and opinions, just as the multitude of
families do these several days. How can I explain
reasons to them? They know that Bush's Administration
is interested in oil control and that they have no
interest in democracy for these people. Why don't
Americans know this? Why did we elect this man without
human feelings, they ask.
It's not easy being an American in a Baghdad Emergency
room seeing victims and their families. I wish that
George Bush was here with his answers to their
outrage.
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April Hurley is a physician from Santa Rosa,
California. She is currently living in Baghdad with
the Voices in the Wilderness' http://www.vitw.org
Iraq Peace Team http://www.iraqpeaceteam.org, a
project to keep international peaceworkers in Iraq
during the war, in order to be a voice for the Iraqi
people to the West. The Iraq Peace Team can be reached
at: info@vitw.org
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