Heartless

Donna Abu-Nasr of the Associated Press on Soldier: U.S. Army turns away burned children in need of help:

On a scorching afternoon, while on duty at an Army airfield, Sgt. David J. Borell was approached by an Iraqi who pleaded for help for his three children, burned when they set fire to a bag containing explosive powder left over from war in Iraq.

Borell immediately called for assistance. But the two Army doctors who arrived about an hour later refused to help the children because their injuries were not life-threatening and had not been inflicted by U.S. troops.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not life threatening injuries, but if we hadn't been raining artillery and bombs on the country, the children wouldn't have been hurt in the first place.

For Borell, who has been in Iraq since April 17, what happened with the injured children has made him question what it means to be an American soldier.

"What would it have cost us to treat these children? A few dollars perhaps. Some investment of time and resources," said Borell, 30, of Toledo, Ohio.

I'm with Sgt Borell on this one. I can't imagine any of the Navy doctors or Corpsmen I knew during my enlistments ignoring the pain of these children. An Army propaganda public affairs officer had this to say:

Maj. David Accetta, public affairs officer with the 3rd Corps Support Command, said the children's condition did not fall into a category that requires Army doctors to care for them. Only patients with conditions threatening life, limb or eyesight and not resulting from a chronic illness are considered for treatment.

"Our goal is for the Iraqis to use their own existing infrastructure and become self-sufficient, not dependent on U.S. forces for medical care," Accetta said in an e-mail to AP.

Hey asshole, we broke their infrastructure into little, tiny pieces. How about dealing with the collateral damage we inflicted first?

Link courtesy of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.