Iraqi Orphanage Nightmare

[sabra]

Source: CBS News

Exclusive: U.S. Troops Discover And Rescue Orphan Boys Left Starving, Chained To Beds

(CBS) It was a scene that shocked battle-hardened soldiers, captured in photographs obtained exclusively by CBS News.

On a daytime patrol in central Baghdad just over than a week ago, a U.S. military advisory team and Iraqi soldiers happened to look over a wall and found something horrific.

"They saw multiple bodies laying on the floor of the facility," Staff Sgt. Mitchell Gibson of the 82nd Airborne Division told CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. "They thought they were all dead, so they threw a basketball (to) try and get some attention, and actually one of the kids lifted up their head, tilted it over and just looked and then went back down. And they said, 'oh, they're alive' and so they went into the building."

Inside the building, a government-run orphanage for special needs children, the soldiers found more emaciated little bodies tied to the cribs. They had been kept this way for more than a month, according to the soldiers called in to rescue the 24 boys.



Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/18/eveningnews/main2946007.shtml

[Fridays Child]

1. Who could possibly treat children this way?

I will never understand.

[Javaman]

11. Do you expect any thing else? they torture kids at gitmo and abu garib. nt

[shance]

2. Memories of Romania....how history seems to repeat.

n/t

[rubberducky]

3. Chained to beds???????

How can something like this happen??? What a damn mess we have made of Iraq.This is so sickening. How will we ever heal that country that we have torn apart?Purely unanswerable questions, but something that we will be answering for a very long time.

[Breeze54]

6. Kids on cement floor chained to beds !!

These "people" are despicable!

Cooking up their breakfast while on the other side of the door,
the naked kids were laying in their own feces and starving to death!

:grr: :grr:

[Name removed]

15. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TomClash]

4. We have to fight orphans over there so we don't have to fight them over here nt

[leftchick]

7. yeah thank god the US troops were there

oh wait, they surely would not be orphans if not for the USA being there! :puke:

[angelgirl]

16. What?

You think that's the only reason that there are orphans over there? Where do you people come from?

[LostinVA]

20. Where do YOU come from, the Right side of the street?

This isn't even a good mystery -- you're just too transparent. Try to be a little more subtle, okay? It'll make it more fun for all of us.

[sanskritwarrior]

19. I'm confused

are you saying there would be no orphanages if we had not gone in??? If that is your claim I would like to disabuse you of that claim......

[LostinVA]

21. The invasion of Iraq caused the collapse of this nation's

Infrastructure and culture. I'm betting that there are many, many more orphanages since the invasion, and that conditions on these orphanages have been spiraling downward since the Invasion.

[acmavm]

5. But the good thing is that the clowns in the puppet goverment can come

to America for medical treatment and to lose weight.

:sarcasm:

[Solly Mack]

8. ...

...

:(

[FloridaJudy]

9. Just when I think the news can't get worse

Something like this comes along. It's a nightmare to anyone with an milligram of compassion.

---sigh---

Please explain to me how the Iraqis are better off now....

[SmokingJacket]

10. Don't click on that story unless

you want to bawl your ass off all day. :cry: :cry: :cry:

[AnneD]

12. It was the most heart wrenching thing I have seen.....

I work extensively with special kids and this just broke my heart. It reminds me of the orphanages in Romania-except worse.

[Barrett808]

13. The comments from Bush apologists are grimly amusing. "your a Moron."

I think he meant "moran."

[Arugula Latte]

14. I was struck by this story on ABC News last night.

It's horrific.

I couldn't help but think that, although the media painted the U.S. as the good guys for rescuing these poor kids, thousands of other children had been slaughtered and maimed by "Shock and Awe" -- for absolutely no reason other than the military-corporate-industrial honchos and the politicos in their pocket WANTED this war to line their own pockets. Pure and simple.

[Matilda]

17. The invasion caused the collapse of the infrastructures of society

that has allowed this abuse to remain undetected for so long. The children were all disabled in
one way or another, and possibly they were orphaned due to the war, but we don't know that at the
moment. But as always, it's the children who suffer for the madness of war.

But the people directly responsible for the abuse were Iraqui, and they may have done nothing
different under Saddam either. Sadly there are always those who see the misfortune of others as
a way to make a profit, and they're in our western societies too. There are also those who appear
to delight in cruelty, especially to the most vulnerable - if they were to be locked up and the
key thrown away, it would be no less than they deserve.

[LeftishBrit]

18. This is heartbreaking

It reminds me of the horrors in Romania