Iraqi mom and dad left to deal with collateral damage on their own.

[JohnyCanuck]

I found the account of these Iraqi parents trying to find help for their 2 year old badly injured daughter especially moving. Its from the freeway blogger's blog. I posted this originally in response to another post on a thread in LBN and some thought it deserved a thread of its own. I don't have any children of my own, but it would take a heart of stone not to empathize with these parents in their predicament.


Last June, Yves Eudes, a reporter for Le Monde, came
to my house and interviewed me about freewayblogging.
He was a younger man, in his thirties, good looking
and somewhat reserved, almost shy, which for a reporter
surprised me. As a political and war correspondent
he'd been in Iraq three times since the invasion and I
asked him what it was like. Specifically, I asked if
he'd seen anything he knew he'd never be able to
forget. He told me this story, and I think about it
whenever I feel like giving up.

"I was in Nasariyah and a couple came up to me on the
street asking for help. They were carrying a large
gym bag, an 'Adidas' bag, with their daughter inside.
The city was in chaos, and they came up to me, I
suppose, because I was a westerner and they thought I could
help them. When I looked inside the bag there was a
little girl, maybe two years old, with bandages around
her head. There was a terrible smell and I thought to
myself 'Okay, they have a dead girl...' The bandages
were loose and soaked in fluid - it was a terrible
wound, covering half her head. I guessed they'd gotten
her to a hospital and they'd done what they could
quickly and gave her back. It was the early days of the
war and the hospitals were full. I couldn't believe it
when I saw she was still alive."

"I took them to the Americans, and there was a woman
soldier there, a big woman, who said there was nothing
they could do... that it had to be a military casualty
or something like that. I forget exactly. I want to
say she was mean, but I don't know. More like she was
just following her orders... she stood like this..."
he said, and folded his arms across his chest.

"We went to a couple more soldiers, but it was the
same. There was one young soldier who went for help, but
then came back saying he couldn't do anything. I went
with them for awhile longer, but it was obvious I was
useless. Eventually they just went away."

We were sitting in my garage, surrounded by the tools
of my trade: cardboard, paint, overhead projector.
Outside it was a beautiful day: a warm, late afternoon
in sunny southern California. "It's hard to describe
what they were like, the parents... they were beyond
sad, beyond scared... they were doing the only thing
they could do - looking for help - and I couldn't help
feeling that I'd wasted their time. I don't know if I
will ever forget their faces, or what it was like to
see their little girl... but the thing I know I will
never forget is the way they looked as they walked away,
wandering the streets with their baby in that bag...
looking for someone who could help them."

http://www.freewayblogger.com/weblog.htm

[xxqqqzme]

1. just recommended it

glad 2 see U posted it here

[chlamor]

2. Kick

One Man. Two Days. More Than 3 Million People Reached.


Bay Area/San Jose, CA With the announcement of the 1500th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, a lone activist known as the Freeway Blogger will post 150 banners on Bay Area freeways protesting the war in Iraq and the failure to find Osama Bin Laden. This action will reach communities including Marin, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Freeway Blogger has posted over 2,500 hand-painted signs on California freeways since the war began.

 

http://www.freewayblogger.com/pressrelease_feb23.htm

[Roland99]

3. Damn....

:(

[leftchick]

4. and there are at least a thousand more stories like this...

:cry: