Iraq says U.S. exaggerates orphans' plight

[sabra]

Source: LA Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- One photograph shows a skin-and-bones boy lying on a bare floor, leashed like a dog to the pink bars of an unoccupied crib. Another shows more boys curled naked on the ground, one of them smeared with human waste.

Almost as jarring as the ghastly scenes was the response of an Iraqi government minister called upon Wednesday to explain how a state-run orphanage in Baghdad could have kept two dozen children in such conditions.

Proving that not even orphans are immune from the political sniping that infests life here, the minister of labor and social welfare accused U.S. troops and the media of exaggerating the situation and distributing the photographs for political gain.

"Are they really concerned about how well the children are treated in that shelter, or is it just propaganda for their alleged kindness?" Mahmoud Mohammed Jawad Radi said to reporters after the U.S. military released the photographs. A military statement said the pictures were taken June 10 after U.S. and Iraqi soldiers were tipped off about conditions at the orphanage in the Fajr neighborhood of western Baghdad.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-orphans21jun21,1,3830149.story?coll=la-headlines-world

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original CBS story here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2885618

[DRoseDARs]

1. OK Radi, you got us: We paid a bunch of child actors to starve themselves and bathe in shit.

Speaking of shit... :eyes:

[seriousstan]

2. Mahmoud Mohammed Jawad Radi is the minister of social affairs.

[rpannier]

3. Mahmoud Mohammed Jawad Radi is about as convincing as scrubbie

nt

[maddezmom]

4. Iraqi official disputes U.S. story of 24 boys' discovery

(The Denver Post)Baghdad, Iraq - An Iraqi official has criticized the U.S. for publicizing soldiers' discovery of 24 severely malnourished boys in a Baghdad orphanage.

Some of the children were tied to their beds and too weak to stand, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Labor and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Mohammed al-Radhi said news reports about the case were inaccurate.

"We totally reject the tricks they used to manipulate and distort facts and show the Americans as the humanitarian party. That could not be further from the truth," he said.

The minister said the institution in which the boys were housed had saved them from a certain death on the streets of Baghdad. All the boys, he said, were severely handicapped and abandoned by their families.

more:http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6188013?source=rss

[Javaman]

5. Perhaps a new baghdad bob? nt