Doctors Are Reportedly Fleeing Iraq

[Barrett808]

Doctors Are Reportedly Fleeing Iraq
The Associated Press
By VERONIKA OLEKSYN
November 22, 2006

Iraq's top doctors are under threat and are fleeing the country, leaving hospitals in the hands of medical students or junior physicians, an Iraqi lawmaker said Wednesday.

Doctors have been kidnapped and killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled ex-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said Dr. Rajaa al-Khuzai, an obstetrician who is an elected member of the Iraqi National Council.

'They have been targeted since the fall of the regime,' she told The Associated Press during a visit to Austria. 'Some of them have been kidnapped and found dead in the streets, some have been released after paying a ransom.'

She also told reporters earlier Wednesday that Iraqi hospitals face a shortage of medicines and are in dire need of new equipment.

'We were promised, or we believed, that we would have many new hospitals being built, and many health centers ... but none of this has been done,' she said. 'No hospitals have been built so far; only some of the hospitals have been serviced.'

(more)

http://www.topix.net/content/ap/2276162846136819889205365306682842274360

[Crayson]

1. else they kidnap them again...

Jup... and they tell those who are bought free for ransom to leave Iraq, else they would kidnap them again.

[Lasher]

2. Didn't Doctors Without Borders pull out of Iraq awhile back?

Or maybe that was Afghanistan. Or both.

[Barrett808]

4. Yes, and Caritas has just withdrawn from Mosul. n/t

[saigon68]

3. They should come to amerika

Lots of hemorrhoids to treat

[lpbk2713]

5. The doctors find out too late what most Americans now know .....

Bush is a pathological liar. He never had any intentions of building any hospitals. He was just a bullshit artist painting a rosy picture to get them to play along for as long as he could run his scam.

[PurityOfEssence]

6. The cradle of civilization may well now be its grave

The fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates was known as the cradle of civilization. That's where social order seems to have first flourished, along with writing and the first real laws, the code of Hammurabi. The covenant of civilization is the willingness to get along and adhere to constraints meant for the benefit of all.

Factionalism--especially supernatural religious factionalism--is the bane of coexistence. Now the infrastructure (what's left of it) is being torn asunder. The weak will suffer most.

We have done a horrible thing to these peoples. Worse, we are without the resolve or mere sense of decency to make it right.

As so many on the left demand us to leave and let our victims burn each other with kerosene and car bombs, we still don't get it: we started this and we owe it to humanity itself to make it right. Do you see a solution? I don't. I see bad policy like pulling everyone out now and letting the locals fend for themselves as unmitigated selfishness. We're responsible. Anyone with circumspect human decency should reach the same conclusion: we owe it to the weak, young, old, infirm and healthy to make this right. Sadly, the right and the left only seem to think of themselves. It's the dark side of the American character: the solitary cowboy is also a selfish fuck.

We suck.

We suck so hard and so much. All we seem to be able to think about is how we can make this easier on ourselves, when we've disrupted a complex society. We've invaded a sovereign nation that never threatened us in the least. We knew they weren't a threat, even in the abstract way of having dangerous weapons; we REALLY knew they weren't threatening US.

What claim we had to moral decency has been squandered in this escapade. It was a war of conquest that was ginned up in a frenzy of fear against a different enemy and directed by greedy interested individuals toward a ripe fruit of opportunity. In our moment of fear, the neocons used racist equations of swarthy muslims to redirect our energies to settling an old score and to try to seize other people's wealth. This is so deeply ugly that it's hard to express.

We have a huge debt to the human race which we need to repay, and very few on the left and essentially nobody on the right seem to see it.

This is disgusting.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. I'm sure this makes Bush glad

because he knows more Iraqis will die has a result.

[tom_paine]

8. A terrible tragedy.