The Boy by the Side of the Road

[gristy]

This heartbreaking story was written by a Marine lieutenant colonel who recently returned from Iraq, and was published 2 weeks ago in the Washington Post. It was re-published today in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The Boy by the Side of the Road

By James B. Seaton III
Sunday, August 31, 2003; Page B07

We were pushing north in Iraq on Route 7, and the road was littered with bodies. From a distance one of them appeared smaller than the rest.

We had been held up in the vicinity of the Euphrates River for two days and had finally broken out of An Nasiriyah the night before. Men were streaming south to kill us as we moved deeper into Iraq, and they had to die.

Approaching a shot-up car in the opposite lane, we looked beyond an obviously dead man to a second body. My driver thought he saw movement so we stopped and got out. It was a boy of 5 or 6. His eyes were closed and he was dead or dying. I bent over, gently cupping his left cheek and chin with my right hand.

He was alive, and my touch must have startled him; both arms fluttered before settling again by his sides. I kept my hand on his face as his breathing settled back into a rhythmic pace, his initial alarm apparently subsiding.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2467-2003Aug29.html

[rfranklin]

1. Another junior terrorist that won't be a problem for George "Warrior" Bush

His codpiece swelled with pride when he saw what he had wrought.