Victims Pile Up in Violent Iraqi Capital

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.abcnews4.com/news/stories/1103/111703.html

Baghdad, Iraq (AP) - The two young men were driving through the Baghdad night when a car passed by and automatic rifle fire rang out. Ali Saleh, 23, felt three bullets tear into his right thigh. Fahd Hamed, 17, was shot in the head.

The war in Iraq may be over, but peace has yet to reach the Iraqi capital. Violence has eased slightly since the summer, but seven months after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's 23-year dictatorship, the city remains lawless and violent.

Nowhere is that more evident than at Yarmouk Hospital, one of Baghdad's biggest.

In the emergency room, Saleh lay on a bed, his thigh bandaged. A nurse used tweezers to pull pieces of the car's windshield from Hamed's face. His head wound was superficial, and he was expected to survive.

"Before the war, we received at most five cases of gunshots or stabbing a month. Sometimes a whole month would pass without a single one," said Dr. Firas Majid, the hospital's chief resident. "After the war ... the number went up to least 10 cases a day."
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[UpInArms]

1. so this is "safer" than Washington DC?

http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2003/09/12.html

The Federalist, a conservative Internet news service, claims that the streets of Baghdad, Iraq, are safer than those of Washington, D.C. On a recent weekend, there were three more murders in Washington, D.C. It says, "The District’s strict gun-control laws did nothing to prevent these murders. Two of them were committed with knives."

Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld came in for criticism weeks ago for saying something similar—that Baghdad has less violent crime than the U.S. capital. "You’ve got to remember that if Washington, D.C. were the size of Baghdad, it would be having something like 215 murders a month," Rumsfeld said. "There’s going to be violence in a big city."

we have so improved the life of the Iraqi people (NOT!)

[peekaloo]

2. the sweet stench of FREEDOM. nt