SUTTILL

Limbless Iraqi boy offered help (From BBC Website)


Almost all of Ali's family died in the attack
An Iraqi boy who had both arms blown off and was orphaned when a missile hit his Baghdad home has been offered help from around the world.
A former Indian royal Maharani Gayatri Devi from Jaipur said she would pay for a pair of artificial limbs for Ali Ismail Abbas, aged 12.

"I have to find out the whereabouts of the boy and where he can be operated upon. If the facilities are good in Iraq then he can be operated in Iraq or else anywhere in the world," she said.

The British clinic which makes prosthetic limbs for Heather Mills, the wife of the pop star Paul McCartney, has also offered to treat Ali Ismail Abbas.

"This is a humanitarian issue," said David Hills, manager of the Dorset Orthopaedic Company.

Now I want to be a doctor - but how can I? I don't have hands

Ali Ismail Abbas
"We all feel a certain amount of guilt for what is going in Iraq, even if we know that this war is necessary as a means to an end... it would be an ideal opportunity to help."

Ali Ismail Abbas was fast asleep when a missile obliterated his home killing most of his family.

"Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit suicide," he told correspondents.

"I wanted to be an army officer when I grow up but not any more. Now I want to be a doctor - but how can I? I don't have hands."

Severe burns

He is presently in a Baghdad hospital, an improvised metal cage over his chest to stop his burned flesh touching the bedclothes.

"It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant."

Seven other members of his family also died in the attack.

Neighbours pulled him out and brought him to the hospital unconscious.


Hospitals are overstretched
"Our house was just a poor shack. Why did they want to bomb us?"

He did not know the area where he lived was surrounded by military installations.

Florian Westphal, of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that it would be necessary to decide whether Ali Ismail Abbas' interests would be best served by bringing him to Britain, as moving him from Baghdad could be fraught with difficulty.

"We are heartened by the public interest in this case. If there is an effort under way which is aimed at helping the boy, we would be all in favour of that. Every single bid to help children like him is important."

'Critical situation'

The United Nations has described the situation in Baghdad's hospitals as "critical", while the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of a health emergency both in Baghdad and in the country as a whole.

Now when you have military engagement on the ground level, most people, at least the combatants, are hit much more seriously

Roland Huguenin-Benjamin
The director of the Red Cross team in the city, Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, said the start of ground operations by US troops in and around the city in recent days had led to a massive increase in doctors' workloads.

This contrasted with the situation during the aerial bombardment of the city in recent weeks, he said, when hospitals had mostly treated casualties with relatively light shrapnel injuries.

"Now when you have military engagement on the ground level, most people, at least the combatants, are hit much more seriously... it's all the more work for the doctors," Mr Huguenin-Benjamin told the BBC.


From the BBC website.

Chaplin

Who attacked? It doesn't say. Was it an American missle, or an Iraqi one?

elindholm

I tend to wonder what stories like this are supposed to accomplish. Frankly, I find them sort of insulting. Does the author of such an article think we don't understand that war means people die? Getting killed is horrible, both for those who die and for family members who survive them. And sometimes survival has other grisly prices as well. We know this.

By all means, every time the U.S. attacks someone, we should know what the consequences will be. Whether this particular attack was from a U.S. or an Iraqi missile doesn't make any difference. Of course we all know that there are dozens of such articles that could be written, and the U.S. is responsible for the tragedy in at least some of those cases.

We know all of this. It is never far from our minds, and it is why thinking people always hesitate to commit to the business of killing. There is no glory in killing, only tragedy. The author of the article, I guess, wants to rub our noses in it. But I know that I'm already sufficiently aware of the ugliness of war, and I'll bet most other people are too.

maddogkf

Is it your intention of your article heading "Armless, Orphaned & Homeless: Was this really worth it?" that we should feel guilty for being there?

If so, then stop drinking the Saddam Kool-Aid.

The article doesn't say that his regime gassed thousands of his own people, tortured his own Olympic team, murdered innocent people, buried them in mass, unmarked graves.

If you are tying to make us feel sorry for the boy, then I feel bad for him. If you are one of these anti-war protesters, then you can go suck on a scud missle.

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SUTTILL

Articles like this show us the reality of the war that is being reported in other areas of the world, not like CNN or Fox News. There should be more of this reality reporting.

The point of this thread is to generate discussion about whether this war is really worth it. Are the Iraqui lives that are being torn apart, literally in some cases, somehow worth less than the value of us creating a "safer world" to live in? I tend to think that there is nothing we are achieving in this war that is worth blowing these civilans up.

It is true that Saddam orchestrated the genocide of thousands of Iraqi's ten years ago in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. But that is not why we are in Iraq. We are there to rid the country of WOMD since Iraq "failed to cooperate" with the disarmarment requiremens. We are there because after 9/11 our leadership does not want to risk WOMD getting in the hands of terrorists.

bratwurst

Yeah what Maddog said.

schutd

Watching the Iraqis celebrate in the streets of Baghdad as I type this in some way, while not lessening the impact of their fellow countrymans deaths, at least goes to show that possibly, they were not killed in vain.

I HATE the idea of war and death, but Im sorry, I have to say that at this very moment (with obviously a lot more to come to determine once and for all this war's worth) that this appears to be worth it.

The statue of Saddma in Liberation Square has just been pulled down, a pre gulf war Iraqi flag is now attached to the base where the statue once stood, and citizens are jumping up and down on the toppled figure of Saddam.

Im not the most emotional of people, but even I am moved by the apparent felings of joy rippling through Baghdad, at this very moment.

Dback Jon

While it is reported that approx 1000 Iraqi citizens were killed in the fighting, how many would have died had we done nothing? Saddam's hitmen killed and tortured 1000's yearly. While I feel for the innocents killed and hurt, we will end up saving lives.

I wonder if the Arab media showed pictures of the prison we liberated that had over 150 children in it - imprisoned because they did not join Saddam's Youth.

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R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

maddogkf

I was listening to the broadcast via ABC radio this morning. Iraqi people are celebrating. One older fella said Saddam killed over a million of their own people. Groups were chanting "Why did you leave us" to US troops. They were mad that we didn't do this 12 yrs ago.

Again, this war is necessary. If you want to play the pity fool & use this child as your poster child, go for it. My poster child is the million dead people in mass graves, killed by this regime.

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Dback Jon

Iraqis tour half-demolished jail 'of evil'
Secret police reported to have used jail for torture
Wednesday, April 9, 2003 Posted: 2:55 AM EDT (0655 GMT)



An alleged torture chamber in the basement of a jail in Basra, Iraq

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


BASRA, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqis showed journalists a white stone jail where they claim Saddam Hussein's secret police for decades tortured inmates with beatings, mutilations, electric shocks and chemical baths.

The jail, known as the "White Lion," was charred and half-demolished Tuesday after two days of bombing by British forces fighting for control of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

People taken behind the jail's sandstone facade usually did not come out, residents said.

Hundreds of Iraqis came to see the now-empty jail, according to British press reports. Relatives of missing inmates checked fingerprinted files and lists of names found amid the fallen bricks.

"It was a place of evil," resident Hamed Fattil said.

Hamed told British reporters that Iraqi police locked him and his two brothers in a jail dungeon in 1991, and that he was freed after eight months but his brothers were still missing.

"They used to strap a leather cord around our head, hands and shoulders and hoist us two feet off the ground. Then they would beat us as we hung there," Hamed said.

"They did unthinkable things -- electrocution, immersion in a bath of chemicals and ripping off people's finger and toenails."

The jail basement was a warren of cells, chambers and cages where the ground was strewn with an insect-eaten gas mask and bottles, according to Associated Press Television News footage.


Hundreds of Iraqis came to see the charred building that locals say Saddam Hussein's secret police used as a jail.
For the cameras, two men re-enacted how jailers allegedly tortured prisoners.

One man, hands tied behind his back with a rope attached to a hook on the ceiling, bent over while another man pantomimed hitting him on the back and the face with his hands and a long, white rod.

One man shuddered while the other gave him a pretend electric shock.

Outside the jail, a man showed APTN his mangled ears.

Hamed took British reporters into a yard behind the jail into a set of white boxy cells, surrounded by red wire mesh with a low, wire roof.

He said some of the cells, which had red doors with large bolts, were used to hold women and children. He also said hundreds of men were kept in a single cell about the size of a living room, which had one rusted grate window.

Between the men's and women's cells was a long mesh cage. Hamed said here, jailers pressed prisoners against the mesh and squeezed hot irons against their backs or threw scalding water on them in front of other inmates.

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R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

Mike Olbinski

You have blinders on to the world if you don't think this was worth it.

Sure, one of our goals was to rid them of WOMD, but our second was a REGIME change because of all the innocent lives Sadaam has slaughtered over the years.

If you think the 1000 civilians that died is even close to the number that WOULD have died had we ignored Sadaam, then I don't know what to say.

It was WELL worth it.

Mike

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Chaplin

What nobody says is that in PEACETIME in the United States, more people die in car accidents, accidental deaths, gang violence and murders than what was killed in Iraq. Hell, Los Angeles alone has near that many deaths in a single year.

It's a tragedy that civilians die, but it's also a tragedy if a relative of yours gets killed in a drunk driving accident. It all could have been prevented.

But to complain about some accidental civilian deaths is on one hand humanitarian, but on the other hypocritical.

justAndy

I'm glad Saddam is going down, and that the Baath party will be dissolved.
You see, back in the 80's, I was put down as a whiner or unamerican for decrying Saddam's brutal tyranny, his genocidal ways, the torturing, etc.
Oh, but he was OUR friend then, said Ronald Reagan, and the entire right wing, and most of the left, turned a blind eye to these widely known facts.
How we forget...

WaywardFan

It's a UN statistic that 5,000 Iraqi children die A MONTH due to malnutrition and curable disease. So, while I feel bad for this particular child I know that he and all the other children will now have a brighter future.

Hell yeah, its worth it.

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Brian in Mesa

Ditto.

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