Carry On Doctor!
So I read this account of US soldier Jessica Lynch’s stay in an Iraqi hospital illuminating. According to her doctors, the Iraqi troops had left days earlier. They attempted to deliver her in an ambulance to the advancing US troops but were fired on and retreated. The next day, US troops stormed the undefended hospital (with an embedded camera crew), cut the power, contaminated a sterilized OR, and blew up and trashed some fixtures and medical equipment.
In the first few days, Houssona said the doctors were somewhat nervous as to whether Iraqi intelligence agents would show any interest in Lynch. But when the road between Nasiriya and Baghdad fell to the U.S.-led coalition, they knew the danger had passed. “At first, Jessica was very frightened. Everybody was poking their head in the room to see her and she said `Do they want to hurt me?’ I told her, `Of course not. They’re just curious. They’ve never seen anyone like you before.’
“We gave her three bottles of blood, two of them from the medical staff because there was no blood at this time,”said Dr Harith al-Houssona, who looked after her throughout her ordeal. “I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle. Then I did another examination. There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound – only RTA, road traffic accident,” he recalled. “They want to distort the picture. I don’t know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury.”