A rchive Date
[ 10-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/brodbeck.html
It was a bloody shame
By TOM BRODBECK -- Winnipeg Sun
April 10, 2003
I wonder how 12-year-old Iraqi Ali Ismaeel Abbas would feel if we told him the life-threatening injuries he sustained during a missile attack on his home Sunday were for a worthwhile cause.
The badly burned orphaned boy had both his arms blown off during the night-time shelling outside of Baghdad, which killed his pregnant mother, his father, his brother, aunt, three cousins and three other relatives.
"Can you help me get my arms back?" he asked a Reuters reporter this week, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands?"
I wonder if he'd agree that the loss of his entire family and both his arms was a reasonable price to pay for so-called liberation.
15 FAMILY MEMBERS KILLED
How about Razeq al-Kadhem al-Khafaji, who lost 15 members of his family -- including his wife, his six children, his father, his mother and his three brothers and their wives -- when a U.S. Apache helicopter blew up their pickup truck near al-Hilla.
The family was fleeing fierce fighting in al-Nasiriya, further south.
I wonder how free he feels today.
Or the woman left clutching the dead, mangled bodies of her two young children after the Toyota she was travelling in was hit by U.S. cannon fire at a checkpoint near Karbala.
There were 15 people inside. Ten died.
"It was the most horrible thing I've seen and I hope I never see it again," Sgt. Mario Manzano, a U.S. army medic said. "She didn't want to get out of the car."
And the death toll rises.
We haven't heard much about it, though, nor seen much of the gruesome images that make war so horrific.
Some news agencies have refused to show the bloody images -- especially civilians killed by U.S. "cluster bombs" -- because they're too graphic, according to Amnesty International.
"Videotape of the victims was judged by Reuters and Associated Press editors as being too awful to show on television," an Amnesty release said this week.
"Independent newspaper journalists reported that the pictures showed babies cut in half and children with their limbs blown off. Two lorry-loads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, were seen outside the hospital."
These are the grim realities of war. But we're not seeing much of it.
Instead, we watch satellite-guided missiles hit distant targets. We see tanks roll into cities, mortar fire strike buildings and a few Iraqi soldiers flee compounds under heavy fire.
We see some images of prisoners of war and the occasional slain Iraqi soldier.
But let's face it, from the perspective of our living room couches, this has been a relatively antiseptic war -- free of blood, maimed bodies and dead children.
If we didn't know any better, this war was almost entirely about "targeted" bombings of government buildings and jubilant Iraqis dancing in the streets.
It's not that there's been a shortage of casualties. No, they number in the thousands. It's just that we're not seeing them.
And if you don't see them, if you don't hear the stories of the grieving families and the shattered lives, you get a lopsided perspective of the war.
If you don't see the pain in the eyes of Ali Ismaeel Abbas, you only get half the story.
But I guess it's easier that way.
Tom Brodbeck is the Sun's city columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at tbrodbeck@wpgsun.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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