Found a really great blog from Cassandra at Villainous Company about the horrible bombing and this eyewitness account from a Chaplain at the base
Regardless of what some may say, these are not stupid people. Any attack with casualties will naturally mean that eventually a very large number of care givers will be concentrated in one location. They took full advantage of that. In the middle of the mayhem the first mortar round hit about 100 to 200 meters away. Everyone started shouting to get the wounded into the hospital which is solid concrete and much safer than being in the open. Soon, the next mortar hit quite a bit closer than the first as they “walked” their rounds toward their intended target…us. Everyone began to rush toward the building. I stood at the door shoving as many people inside as I could. Just before heading in myself, the last one hit directly on top of the hospital. I was standing next to the building so was shielded from any flying shrapnel. In fact, the building, being built as a bunker took the hit with little effect. However, I couldn’t have been more than 10 to 15 meters from the point of impact and brother did I feel the shock. That’ll wake you up! I rushed inside to find doctors and nurses draped over patients, others on the floor or under something. I ducked low and quickly moved as far inside as I could.
You really need to read the whole blog, it’s quite powerful and moving. Cassandra adds:
want everyone reading this to stop and think about this for just one second. Let it sink in.
Someone was sitting out there coolly targeting, not combatants, but a hospital.
We’ve heard a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo Bay. About the Geneva Convention, which doesn’t even cover non-signatories. About the International Torture Convention which, though ratified by Congress in 1994, was also limited by Congress’ deliberate refusal to implement a critical provision of the convention prohibiting “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” — a fact the media steadfastly refuses to report.
Yet here we have “insurgents” deliberately and cold-bloodedly targeting our wounded and medical personnel, and our media are….silent.
Where is the lurid, Abu-Gharaib-style tabloid coverage?
Why isn’t this front-page news?
It never will be front page news with MSM we have. If it doesn’t involve evil americans then its not news. The terrorists are really “insurgents” to them, give me a effin break.
From covering up Saddam’s crimes, to refusing to report the reams of good news from Iraq and Afghanistan, to forging documents to try and sway an election, to misquoting the administration time and time again, the media have gone out of their way to slant the public perception of current events.
It needs to stop. Which side are you on? Ours? Or theirs?
We’ll be waiting for your answer.
They have always been on the side of the anti-american since the 60’s, will it ever turn back? I can’t see it happening. Not with the liberal jackass professors that permeate our college campuses teaching the next generation. It will be up to us to make sure this kind of stuff does not go unnoticed….we need to keep this kind of information in the public eye. That is our mission.
Belmont Club has a good post on this plus a link to Mark Glaser who stated the following:
For way too long, it has been the mainstream media (MSM) that’s played God with the American public, telling everyone what’s news and what’s not, what to play up and what to downplay. But 2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of media what the public really wanted.
Amen!
See author page