Fallujah Refugees in Their Own Words

from michael moore site
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=399

Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches

“Doctors in Fallujah are reporting there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33 year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad, “Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.” He looks at the ground, then away to the distance.

Honking cars fill the chaotic street outside the hospital where they’d just received brand new desks. The empty boxes are strewn about outside. Um Mohammed, a doctor at the hospital sat behind her old, wooden desk. “How can I take a new desk when there are patients dying because we don’t have medicine for them,” she asked while holding her hands in the air, “They should build a lift so patients who can’t walk can be taken to surgery, and instead we have these new desks!” Her eyes were piercing with fire, while yet another layer of frustration is folded into her work.

“And there are still a few Iraqis who think the Americans came to liberate them,” she added while looking out the broken window. The glass lay about outside-shattered from a car bomb that had detonated in front of the hospital. “These people will change their minds about the liberators when they, too, have had a family member killed by them.”

Mehdi then takes us to a refugee camp of Fallujans over on the campus of the University of Baghdad. Tents surround an old mosque. Kids run about, several of them kicking around a half-inflated soccer ball. Some women are using two water taps to clean pots and wash clothing. Many people stand around, walking aimlessly, waiting.

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