posted on April 3, 2003 07:41:47 PM new
I think higher powers were at work in the rescue of pfc Jessica Lynch (a miracle).
Iraqi informer angered by treatment of POW
By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Knight Ridder Newspapers
MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq - The Iraqi man who tipped U.S. Marines to the location of American POW Jessica Lynch said Thursday he did so after he saw her Iraqi captor slap her twice as she lay wounded in a hospital.
"A person, no matter his nationality, is a human being," the tipster, a 32-year-old lawyer whose wife was a nurse at the hospital, said in an interview at Marines' headquarters, where he, his wife and daughter are being treated as heroes and guests of honor.
"He is an extremely courageous man who should serve as an inspiration to all of us to do the right thing," said Lt. Col. Rick Long, spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
After he saw Lynch slapped, the lawyer slipped into her room at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah and told her, "Don't worry." Then he walked six miles to the nearest U.S. Marines and told them where she was.
He later returned to the hospital, at the request of U.S. commanders, to map the facility and count how many Saddam Hussein loyalists were there.
A U.S. commando force whose name remains secret rescued Lynch early Wednesday local time. She was taken Thursday to Germany for treatment of injuries she suffered when she was captured.
The lawyer, whose first name is Mohammed and who asked that his last name not be published, smiled between every sentence as he recounted in broken but expressive English how he helped the Americans. He learned English at Basra University.
Wearing Marine hand-me-downs after fleeing with only the clothes on their backs, Mohammed, his wife Iman, 32, a nurse at Saddam Hospital, and 6-year-old daughter Abir, seemed surprisingly cheerful for a family on the run.
Grateful Leathernecks showered them with Marine unit patches, a commemorative coin and an American flag on their way to a refugee center near the port of Umm Qsar, where they hope to ride out the war.
"I love America. I like America. Why, I don't know," Mohammed said as he recounted the critical role he played in Lynch's rescue.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has long repressed Iraq's people with such a brutal grip that even with American troops at the gates to Baghdad many refuse to rise up against him out of fear that he will outlast the Americans.
But Mohammed's tale is one of a man who didn't like what he saw when he walked into the Saddam Hospital last Friday to visit his wife and was told by a doctor friend that an American woman POW was in the emergency ward.
The friend walked him to the ground-floor ward, taken over by the feared Saddam Fedayeen at the start of the war, and past a window where he saw Lynch, an Army private first class captured after her convoy became lost near Nasiriyah in the opening days of the war.
Her head was bandaged, her right arm was in a sling over a white blanket and she had what Mohammed thought was a gunshot wound to a leg. But her real problem then was the black-uniformed Fedayeen commander who everyone addressed as "colonel."
The man slapped her, Mohammed said. "One, two," he added, making single slapping and back slap motions with his right hand. She was very brave, he recalled.
"My heart cut," Mohammed added, meaning stopped, putting his hand over his chest and grimacing. "There, I have decided to go to Americans to give them important information about the woman prisoner."
He walked into her room with his doctor friend. "I said 'Good morning.' She thought I was a doctor. I say, 'Don't worry.' She smiled," he recalled.
Doctors treating Lynch wanted to amputate her leg, Mohammed said, but his doctor friend persuaded them not to. His friend, he said, "hates Saddam Hussein and hates security of Saddam Hussein."
Mohammed said he told his wife to take their daughter to his father's house for safety, and then set off on foot to find the American troops he had heard were occupying the edges of Nasiriyah.
"This was very dangerous for me because American soldiers shoot," he said, throwing up his hands in the air to show how he carefully approached what turned out to be the U.S. Marines.
He told them about the woman prisoner, and about a U.S. military uniform he had also seen, presumably of a U.S. soldier killed in the fighting in and around Nasiriyah, some of the heaviest of the war.
They asked him to return to the six-story, 234-bed hospital to gather information on its layout, its hallways, stairways and doors, its basement and whether a helicopter could land on its roof.
He walked back, with no taxis in sight, even as U.S. jets bombed parts of the city of more than 500,000 people. "Boom, boom. I walked under bombs. Fire, Fire," Mohammed recalled.
He did the same thing the next day to report back to the Marines.
There were 41 Fedayeen based at the hospital, with four guarding Lynch's room in civilian clothes but armed with AK-47 assault rifles and carrying radios.
"I drew them a map. I drew them five maps," he said, plainly relishing his cloak-and-dagger missions into the heart of Saddam's terror network.
Fedayeen raided his house the next day, he said, taking away all his possessions and even his car, a Russian-made Muscovitch Brazilia 680. He said a neighbor was shot and her body dragged through the streets just for waving at a U.S. helicopter.
"Very bad people," he said. "There is no kindness in my heart for them."
He got his family out of Nasiriyah on Tuesday night, hours before a task force of U.S. commandos rescued Lynch in a raid so noteworthy that the U.S. Central Command in Qatar called a 4:30 a.m. news conference to announce it.
Four American journalists who have had regular access to the Marines' combat operations center in southern Iraq were asked to stay away from the COC as the rescue operation was getting underway.
Mohammed and his family are now officially "temporary refugees."
After showers, Mohammed put on an oversized green Marine pullover, his wife put on one of the gray T-shirts that MTV donated to the Leathernecks and his daughter was covered to her knees in a green T-shirt from a Marine chemical warfare unit.
But Mohammed did not appear despondent, as his wife smiled and stayed shyly in the background and daughter Abir played with a neon-green illumination stick given to her by a Marine.
"I am very happy," he said, adding that his wife wants to work in a hospital helping Americans and that he is eager to help the Marines any way he can until he can return home to Nasiriyah and resume his normal life.
"In future, when Saddam Hussein down, I will go back to Nasiriyah because my house and office are there," he said. As for the Fedayeen, he said, "when Saddam Hussein down, I sure they go away."
"Believe me, not only I, all the people of Iraq, not the people in the government, like Americans," Mohammed said. "They want to help the Americans, but they are all afraid."
posted on April 3, 2003 07:52:09 PM new
ebayauctionguy - I am really glad you started a separate thread for this. I posted the same article under a different thread; after I did it, I felt it needed a thread of its own - so thank you
It is a very touching article...very touching.
"Be kind. Remember everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Harry Thompson
posted on April 5, 2003 06:21:38 AM new
Helen,
Is this the bigger picture your talking about?
"What will be the goals of our socialist society?
A life free of exploitation, insecurity, poverty; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness.
An end to racism, national oppression, anti-Semitism, all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry. An end to the unequal status of women.
Renewal and extension of democracy; an end to the rule of corporate America and private ownership of the wealth of our nation. Creation of a truly humane and rationally planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the human personality, creativity and talent."
It's a fallacy, a cruel joke played on the weak of mind, lazy and the lonely.
It's an advertisement for a product that's not real, doesn't work and is impossible to obtain.
posted on April 5, 2003 07:43:14 AM new
Helen,it doesnt matter what your answer is,it will be wrong.You have to realize that.
Give in,scratch your belly, and go get a beer.LOL
Colin doesnt know when hes been preached to,the media is so desperate for a hero Iraqi
they named him,(by location)told where his wife worked,about his children,told where his offices were located and every word he uttered ,and the miles he walked to get help.
Of course some will not understand my statement about him and his family will now turn up dead.
posted on April 5, 2003 09:21:44 AM new
Helen,
I'm not changing the subject. That's what all your posts say or allude to.
I'll take George Jr. and/or the Republican party over the Socialism, Communist or pseudo Intellectuals anytime.
I enjoy being an American. I'm proud to be an American. I don't wrap myself in the flag. I wrap myself in the ideals of honor, integrity and loyalty. Of course that's what the flag stands for anyway.
These are the things I hold highest. These are the things I've learned from my parents, friends, teachers but most of all through living my live. These are the things I can honor in others or bestow on my children and grandchildren.
I didn't grow up living in fear and they won't either.
posted on April 5, 2003 09:58:14 AM new
Sometimes fear is a healthy response. the terrorism that will result from this war will not be so easy to eliminate.
posted on April 6, 2003 08:55:51 PM new
Sorry for being so dense, but are you saying that you feel the whole story about the Iraqi is fiction? And the way it will be covered is that sometime in the very near future he, and his family, will end up being reported as dead?
What makes you believe this?
"Who's tending the bar? Sniping works up a thirst"
posted on April 6, 2003 09:22:34 PM new
::the media is so desperate for a hero Iraqi they named him,(by location)told where his wife worked,about his children,told where his offices were located and every word he uttered ,and the miles he walked to get help. ::
Junque - if you follow the various stories on the gentlemen and his family you would have learned that they said that he and his family were with the Marines under their care and watch when the rescue was executed. They have since been moved to another location and remain under the protection of US forces and been granted refugee status if they wish to come to the United States.
posted on April 6, 2003 09:41:55 PM new
neonmania,why so jaded?
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Junque - if you follow the various stories on the gentlemen and his family you would have learned that they said that he and his family were with the Marines under their care and watch when the rescue was executed. They have since been moved to another location and remain under the protection of US forces and been granted refugee status if they wish to come to the United States.
-----------------------------------------
And this part of the storey didnt come out until today,had it been available 2 days ago,I would have never made the remark.
Had you known it two days ago,or even yesterday,you would have said so.
If you had been following the storey,...What took you so long?
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Hell yes, Im glad the whole family is safe.
posted on April 6, 2003 10:07:53 PM new
::And this part of the storey didnt come out until today,had it been available 2 days ago,I would have never made the remark.::
It was part of a story carried on AOLs front page the day after she was rescued.
::Had you known it two days ago,or even yesterday,you would have said so.
If you had been following the storey,...What took you so long? ::
Simple - Tonight was the first time since the story was posted that I have returned to this thread. Sorry
Sniping works up a thirst"