Nearly a year after it took over the running of the country whose medical care system was the envy of the middle east,
this is what the US has wrought in Iraq
On one weekday morning last month, Ibtisam Ali, 35, brought her brother's baby to Iskan. Her local hospital, where the baby was born that day, had turned her away because it did not have medicine to treat the baby. The boy looked blue and was bleeding from his nose and mouth.
A doctor told her that the child needed an incubator but that none was available. Ali called a few hospitals and found that Medical City had a free incubator. She raced over in a taxi, but when she arrived, she was told the space had been given to another baby.
Ali argued: "Why did I come here? . . . I spent all my money on taxis and reserved the place, and you say you are going to take [the incubator] away. I have the priority."
The doctor replied: "This is not a hotel."
A nurse, Faihaa Muhsin, tried to console Ali by telling her that even if they had an incubator, they didn't have a mechanical ventilator to keep the child breathing. "He is a hopeless case. It is up to God," Muhsin said.
Sanaa Mehdi, 18, the mother's sister, was not ready to give up, so Muhsin handed her a manual ventilator and told her to squeeze and let go, squeeze and let go, as long as she could. Shortly before dawn, after standing by the baby and working the respirator for eight hours, Mehdi's arms gave out.
Her nephew, Abdullah Hassan Ali, age 1 day, died at 4 a.m. The death certificate listed "respiratory failure" as the cause.
But we know that the cause was moral turpitude, endless arrogance and a callousness beyond description. Or, to put it in the terms of a letter to this morning's Sydney Morning Herald
With the case for invading Iraq effectively demolished, Mitchell Beston (Letters, March 4) asks, "Would you prefer Saddam Hussein to be in power?" The answer is, "Quite possibly, yes."