Paying A High Price In Iraq (Civilian victims left broken and burdened)

[Barrett808]

Paying A High Price In Iraq
Civilian victims of the violence often left broken and burdened
By JONATHAN FINER
& OMAR FEKEIKI
& THE WASHINGTON POST
Published on 6/3/2005

Baghdad, Iraq— On a steamy June morning two years ago, a U.S. soldier's warning shot ricocheted off a sand berm and blew a hole in Raez Habib's life.

The stray bullet plowed through the meat of his left thigh and shattered his right femur, leaving him bleeding in the street, Habib recalled in a recent interview. A helicopter took him to a military hospital, where doctors amputated his right leg four inches below the hip.

The shooting was an accident, a tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to Habib and to statements from four U.S. service members who were at or near the scene, which Habib keeps in a tattered manila folder. He soon lost his job as a builder, because he could no longer carry heavy loads, and moved his family into his mother's three-room clay house.

Deaf since birth, Habib, 35, communicates through muffled groans and hand signals. “I have a wife and three children and no way to provide for them,” he said, his fingers clenching the fabric of his long white robe as his younger brother, Ghassan, translated.

“We don't think about who to blame. It was his destiny,” Ghassan Habib said. “It happened. We take care of him. That is all.”

(more)

http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=D5D14E28-753A-43DA-ABE6-90F154C2F97C

[Dhalgren]

1. Just so long as we all realize that this was Habib's fault.

A "tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time". Right, when the crazy survivalists, from down the road, go running through my woods shoots guns off and a stray bullet hits my kid, I'll just say that the "shooting was an accident" and I just won't "think about who to blame". It makes me sick seeing articles like this. The US and its tools are unable to take responsibility for anything. Hey, tough cookies, he was in the way! He should have been minding his own business and not have been hanging around where the "good guys" were blowing shit up! Poor, poor, little brown person (not like a real human, after all), he knows it was his own fault. USA! USA! USA! :eyes: