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      The Gulf War 30 Years Ago: Memories From a Shelter in Baghdad

      The Gulf War 30 Years Ago: Memories From a Shelter in Baghdad

      On February 13, 1991, a horrific massacre took place in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. The U.S. coalition bombed a shelter and killed more than 400 people.

      Patrik Paulov
      Feb 14, 2021

      The traces of the attack were visible everywhere. There was a large hole in the solid concrete roof. The rebars had been torn apart. On the walls there were pictures in long lines. Pictures of children, who should have had their lives ahead of them. Pictures of burnt bodies. Their lives ended abruptly in the very place where they thought they would be safe.

      Intesar Ahmed showed me around in the shelter in al-Amiriya on the western outskirts of Baghdad. She told me what happened at four o'clock in the morning on February 13, 1991.

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      Opinion
      Missing: 505 COVID Masks Destined for Baghdad Hospital via UPS

      Missing: 505 COVID Masks Destined for Baghdad Hospital via UPS

      Our human-to-human good-will gesture—the washing, cutting, sewing, assembling and shipping costs along with the sweet anticipation of their arrival in Baghdad—has been denied, stolen from us. 

      Claudia Lefko
      Jun 22, 2020

      Iraq experienced a dramatic upsurge in COVID cases beginning in early in June just as a group of mask-makers in Western Massachusetts was sending 500 masks--including 100 highly effective, medical-quality HEPA vac masks-- to the Pediatric Oncology Unit at Children's Welfare Teaching Hospital in Medical City Baghdad (CWTH). They were sent on June 5; I tracked them as they traveled to Kentucky, then to Dubai--taking some days at each stop. Then, they were in transit in Baghdad, scheduled for delivery on Wednesday, June 17. But they didn't move. I checked the UPS tracking site; I phoned my local store and the international UPS help line. At one point the message said the package was being help-up by a government regulatory agency hold; at another point they said it had been shipped to Kurdistan and informed the doctor who'd phoned from Baghdad they would need a request from the Ministry of Health in that province to get the package released. And then the next day--June 22nd--they told me the package was classified as "lost."

      And all this while, the virus is spreading and taking a toll in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. One hundred fifty new cases of the virus were recorded on May 18; 1463 recorded on June 18 and 1870 on June 20. While aware of the emerging pandemic, masks weren't necessarily on the doctor's radar when I first asked about them. They're in an existential crisis, as they have been for more than three decades now, exhausted by their efforts to meet the needs of an increasing number of increasingly serious cancer cases without the facilities, drugs or sufficient number of properly trained personnel necessary for such a challenging specialty.

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      Opinion
      'This Was Murder,' Says Judge, Sentencing Ex-Blackwater Guard to Life for Nisour Square Massacre

      'This Was Murder,' Says Judge, Sentencing Ex-Blackwater Guard to Life for Nisour Square Massacre

      Welcoming the sentence, one attorney said, "Justice prevails for my clients—six families that suffered tragic losses that day."

      Jessica Corbett
      Aug 15, 2019

      Rejecting claims from defense attorneys and family members that U.S. prosecutors scapegoated former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten to improve U.S.-Iraqi relations, a federal judge sentenced former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten to life in prison Wednesday for his role in the notorious 2007 Nisour Square massacre.

      "The jury got it exactly right," Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for D.C. reportedly said while issuing the sentence. "This was murder."

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