WP: Violence Invades Baghdad's ERs: Police, Soldiers Attack Physicians

[DeepModem Mom]

Violence Invades Baghdad's Emergency Rooms
Seeking Priority Care for Their Wounded, Iraqi Soldiers, Police Attack Physicians
By Saad al-Izzi
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 21, 2006; Page A21

BAGHDAD, May 16 -- On a bad day in Baghdad's busiest Iraqi ER -- and they're all bad -- the men wielding AK-47 assault rifles and pistols can outnumber the men and women with scalpels and stretchers 2 to 1.

"Help us out here!" called a blood-soaked man who had hauled his third pickup-truck load of dead and wounded men and women from a recent market bombing to the emergency room at Yarmouk Hospital.

But armed Iraqi soldiers in camouflage and flak vests ignored the plea. Instead, they hustled comrades wounded in a clash with insurgents into the already crowded ER, where gunmen in civilian garb had brought their own bleeding friends.

"We have no problems with pistols and AK-47s, but sometimes they come with their bigger machine guns into this small ward," Nail Ali Hussein, a pediatric surgeon turned trauma specialist, said as he made his way around four Iraqi soldiers in battle gear clustered around a comrade with a chest wound. "A scratch," Hussein said dismissively of the injury.

Located in west Baghdad, the bloodiest half of the Iraqi capital, Yarmouk has coped for three years with an unrelenting daily stream of wounded, dying and dead. The U.S. emergency room depicted in the HBO documentary "Baghdad ER," airing for the first time Sunday night, does similar work for wounded U.S. military personnel and Iraqi civilians, but compared to this one it's secure and well equipped....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052001044.html

[faithnotgreed]

1. nicely buried on page 21

but when you have important information like investigating dems or ...... then thats front page news

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. But the embassy and the military bases proceed at an unprecedented rate

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Hospitals, schools, drinkable water, electricity 24 hours a day, etc., -

Well

Priorities ya know . . .

(sigh)

[rodeodance]

3. soldiers get treated first (no triage but for the gun).