How and Why Did Iraqi Die? 2 Tales of Anger and Denial

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 26 — Any of Ali Muhsin's neighbors can describe the scene after he was shot by the Americans.

First he stumbled around the corner, dripping blood, and collapsed near the front door of his home. His neighbors hailed a taxi to take him to the hospital, but then a Humvee roared down the street and blocked the way.

An American soldier leaped out and ran up to Ali, firing a shot in the air to scatter the crowd, then aiming his rifle at the boy. The boy's mother, Rajaa Yousif Matti, implored the soldier not to kill him. She wept and wailed. She pleaded in Arabic that he had done nothing wrong and begged to put him in the taxi. She kissed the soldier's boots. But she could not get through to the American.

"If they had let us take him to the hospital, my son would still be alive," she said two days later, at Ali's funeral, weeping once again as she accused the soldiers of killing her son by letting him bleed on the pavement for hours. "It does not matter if you are a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew. How could anyone treat a human being this way?"

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