I agree with all of that. But if his poor, lifeless corpse is being paraded around for the press to use as anti-US propaganda, that is the worst kind of tragic.
Why is it so hard to believe the photographer, Kadim, went to the hospital, too?
Isn't hard to believe at all. I don't doubt that he did. I'm just pointing out the discrepancies and the similarity to staged photos used before by the AP and by this same band of merry photographers, who "just happen" to be exactly on the scene at exactly the right time to get the perfect angle(s) and shots- all the time. It's almost like their scenes were staged so they could take the Pulitzer Prize winning pics. Exactly like they were staged!
Maybe the child’s wounds just aren’t visible in that photo. And maybe he was declared dead right away before they cut away his clothing and checked for injury.
Look at the series of photos. Read the captions that accompanies them. The caption writers have mostly the photographer's notes and descriptions, if not the exact captions, to use when publishing the photos. If they say that the child was pulled alive from the rubble, but died at the hospital an hour later, what else are we to go by? It's the AP's own words!
I can appreciate your experience as a paramedic, but maybe medical clinics in Iraq don’t hold to the same standards that you do here in the U.S.
I don't doubt at all that they may lack the standards of here in the US, but I've been out in the real world. I've pulled bodies out of mangled vehicles, handled gun shot/knife victims, pulled people living and dead out of a lot of different places. There are certain similarities in how bodies bleed, how wounds look, how clothing absorbs blood, how corpses look that are pretty much universal. There is a death pallor of a corpse and then there is the paleness of a living victim who is alive but in traumatic or hypovolemic shock. Trauma looks the same the world over. Once you've seen enough of it, it isn't hard to instantly recognize. Same thing with death.
No, I wouldn't hold a clinic in Iraq to the same standards as a trained EMS tech in the US. But removing clothes to look for compromising wounds on a dying child is clearly not a high standard to hold, nor a stretch of logic for most any medically trained person- even in a clinic in Iraq. Just think, you've got a child, supposedly just pulled from the rubble of a building, who is unconscious and near death. Wouldn't you look under the child's clothes to see if you could find out why? Crush injuries? Closed fractures? Wouldn't you at least remove the clothes to look for wounds? Maybe not. Not if the child was already a corpse and the whole thing was just being staged for the news cameras.
I hope to find out I’m wrong and that these photos were faked. I would like to believe that this didn’t happen the way the photos suggest. I don’t see a way to prove it, though.
I agree, I would love to believe that it didn't happen that way. And in order to "prove" that, you have to do a little objective analysis of what evidence you are given. We are given these photos with the captions that allegedly damn the US military and Iraq military for the "attacks" on "Shiite militants [who] ambushed a U.S. patrol", killing innocent civilians.
If the AP is going to produce these photos (and words) as true and valid documentation and description of the real world in Iraq, then we are fully entitled to scrutinize them in minute detail, and point out any discrepancies between how the real world works and what AP says and shows. I'm just doing my part in pointing out what strikes me, based upon MY real world experiences. And the AP's documented history of faking/staging photos and writing anti-US propaganda.
At this point, I'm more convinced that the little "two year old" was an already dead corpse that was trotted out by propagandists so that Kadim and friends could stage the photos and give the AP more anti-US fodder.
Yup, I'm that skeptical.
Agreed.
I'm just pointing out the discrepancies and the similarity to staged photos used before by the AP and by this same band of merry photographers, who "just happen" to be exactly on the scene at exactly the right time to get the perfect angle(s) and shots- all the time.
You're right, those points should raise suspicion.
Wouldn't you at least remove the clothes to look for wounds? Maybe not. Not if the child was already a corpse and the whole thing was just being staged for the news cameras.
OK, that's food for thought.