Outrage in Baghdad
By April Hurley, MD, Iraq Peace Team
24 March 2003
In America, the saying goes 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 missile 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 hat 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.
April Hurley is a physician from Santa Rosa, California. She is currently
living in Baghdad with the Voices in the Wilderness' Iraq Peace Team,
a group of international peaceworkers remaining in Iraq through the
war, in order to be a voice for the Iraqi people in the West. The Iraq
Peace Team can be reached at [email protected]