Hearts and Minds
by Devilstower
Sat May 03, 2008 at 02:40:05 PM PDT
Every person injured, every person killed, has a mother, has a father, has siblings, has uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends. And they all have memories.
That's one good reason why 100 more years of this is 105 years too long.
The U.S. military on Saturday fired missiles at a target about 50 yards away from the general hospital in Baghdad's Sadr City district, wounding more than 20 people and destroying ambulances, hospital officials said.
Of course, the military was aiming at a building occupied by "a criminal element," and by all accounts that building was destroyed. The building happened to be a chapel used by the hospital workers.
But does it matter that there was no intent to hurt civilians?
This kind of incident certainly isn't new. It's hardly even news. Air strikes in this conflict have by now taken out weddings and schools, convoys of government officials on their way to a conference, and a countless individuals that just happened to live in the wrong neighborhood. Of course it's accidental. of course it's regrettable. But if it was your family, would that matter? Would it matter if your children?
The ugly daily fight for ground in the poor Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City unfolded Saturday at a small mosque next door to a hospital, damaging the hospital and all its ambulances, and near a group of children who were injured by the violence as they gathered tin cans to sell for salvage.
The first hit came after a night of clashes in the neighborhood, when the Americans fired at least three "precision-guided munitions" in the area of the Sadr General Hospital at 10 a.m. The target was a small building next door to the hospital that neighbors said was used as a rest house and place of prayer for hospital employees, pilgrims and neighborhood residents. ... Doctors and nurses ran screaming as the blasts blew out hospital windows and shook the building, said one doctor, who asked that his name not be used.
About an hour later, at the front line between the southern part of the neighborhood that is held by the American and Iraqi military and the northern section that is held by Shiite militias, the group of children was hit, according to a child and one adult who was injured there and brought to the Sadr hospital.
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