Posted on 04/03/2003 7:09:25 PM PST by 68skylark
MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq - The Iraqi man who tipped U.S. Marines to the location of American POW Jessica Lynch said Thursday he did so after he saw her Iraqi captor slap her twice as she lay wounded in a hospital.
"A person, no matter his nationality, is a human being," the tipster, a 32-year-old lawyer whose wife was a nurse at the hospital, said in an interview at Marines' headquarters, where he, his wife and daughter are being treated as heroes and guests of honor.
"He is an extremely courageous man who should serve as an inspiration to all of us to do the right thing," said Lt. Col. Rick Long, spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
After he saw Lynch slapped, the lawyer slipped into her room at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah and told her, "Don't worry." Then he walked six miles to the nearest U.S. Marines and told them where she was.
He later returned to the hospital, at the request of U.S. commanders, to map the facility and count how many Saddam Hussein loyalists were there.
A U.S. commando force whose name remains secret rescued Lynch early Wednesday local time. She was taken Thursday to Germany for treatment of injuries she suffered when she was captured.
The lawyer, whose first name is Mohammed and who asked that his last name not be published, smiled between every sentence as he recounted in broken but expressive English how he helped the Americans. He learned English at Basra University.
Wearing Marine hand-me-downs after fleeing with only the clothes on their backs, Mohammed, his wife Iman, 32, a nurse at Saddam Hospital, and 6-year-old daughter Abir, seemed surprisingly cheerful for a family on the run.
Grateful Leathernecks showered them with Marine unit patches, a commemorative coin and an American flag on their way to a refugee center near the port of Umm Qsar, where they hope to ride out the war.
"I love America. I like America. Why, I don't know," Mohammed said as he recounted the critical role he played in Lynch's rescue.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has long repressed Iraq's people with such a brutal grip that even with American troops at the gates to Baghdad many refuse to rise up against him out of fear that he will outlast the Americans.
But Mohammed's tale is one of a man who didn't like what he saw when he walked into the Saddam Hospital last Friday to visit his wife and was told by a doctor friend that an American woman POW was in the emergency ward.
The friend walked him to the ground-floor ward, taken over by the feared Saddam Fedayeen at the start of the war, and past a window where he saw Lynch, an Army private first class captured after her convoy became lost near Nasiriyah in the opening days of the war.
Her head was bandaged, her right arm was in a sling over a white blanket and she had what Mohammed thought was a gunshot wound to a leg. But her real problem then was the black-uniformed Fedayeen commander who everyone addressed as "colonel."
The man slapped her, Mohammed said. "One, two," he added, making single slapping and back slap motions with his right hand. She was very brave, he recalled.
"My heart cut," Mohammed added, meaning stopped, putting his hand over his chest and grimacing. "There, I have decided to go to Americans to give them important information about the woman prisoner."
He walked into her room with his doctor friend. "I said 'Good morning.' She thought I was a doctor. I say, 'Don't worry.' She smiled," he recalled.
Doctors treating Lynch wanted to amputate her leg, Mohammed said, but his doctor friend persuaded them not to. His friend, he said, "hates Saddam Hussein and hates security of Saddam Hussein."
Mohammed said he told his wife to take their daughter to his father's house for safety, and then set off on foot to find the American troops he had heard were occupying the edges of Nasiriyah.
"This was very dangerous for me because American soldiers shoot," he said, throwing up his hands in the air to show how he carefully approached what turned out to be the U.S. Marines.
He told them about the woman prisoner, and about a U.S. military uniform he had also seen, presumably of a U.S. soldier killed in the fighting in and around Nasiriyah, some of the heaviest of the war.
They asked him to return to the six-story, 234-bed hospital to gather information on its layout, its hallways, stairways and doors, its basement and whether a helicopter could land on its roof.
He walked back, with no taxis in sight, even as U.S. jets bombed parts of the city of more than 500,000 people. "Boom, boom. I walked under bombs. Fire, Fire," Mohammed recalled.
He did the same thing the next day to report back to the Marines.
There were 41 Fedayeen based at the hospital, with four guarding Lynch's room in civilian clothes but armed with AK-47 assault rifles and carrying radios.
"I drew them a map. I drew them five maps," he said, plainly relishing his cloak-and-dagger missions into the heart of Saddam's terror network.
Fedayeen raided his house the next day, he said, taking away all his possessions and even his car, a Russian-made Muscovitch Brazilia 680. He said a neighbor was shot and her body dragged through the streets just for waving at a U.S. helicopter.
"Very bad people," he said. "There is no kindness in my heart for them."
He got his family out of Nasiriyah on Tuesday night, hours before a task force of U.S. commandos rescued Lynch in a raid so noteworthy that the U.S. Central Command in Qatar called a 4:30 a.m. news conference to announce it.
Four American journalists who have had regular access to the Marines' combat operations center in southern Iraq were asked to stay away from the COC as the rescue operation was getting underway.
Mohammed and his family are now officially "temporary refugees."
After showers, Mohammed put on an oversized green Marine pullover, his wife put on one of the gray T-shirts that MTV donated to the Leathernecks and his daughter was covered to her knees in a green T-shirt from a Marine chemical warfare unit.
But Mohammed did not appear despondent, as his wife smiled and stayed shyly in the background and daughter Abir played with a neon-green illumination stick given to her by a Marine.
"I am very happy," he said, adding that his wife wants to work in a hospital helping Americans and that he is eager to help the Marines any way he can until he can return home to Nasiriyah and resume his normal life.
"In future, when Saddam Hussein down, I will go back to Nasiriyah because my house and office are there," he said. As for the Fedayeen, he said, "when Saddam Hussein down, I sure they go away."
"Believe me, not only I, all the people of Iraq, not the people in the government, like Americans," Mohammed said. "They want to help the Americans, but they are all afraid."
Reminded me of when the neighbor of one of Osama's lieutenants turned him in a month or two ago. They wouldn't say who it was, just that it was a "neighbor". Good job of condemning everybody who lived on that street to death. They said they relocated him to England, hopefully they'll set this guy up somewhere safe - sounds like he can provide quite a bit of testimony.
. . .
After he saw Lynch slapped, the lawyer slipped into her room at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah and told her, "Don't worry." Then he walked six miles to the nearest U.S. Marines and told them where she was.
He later returned to the hospital, at the request of U.S. commanders, to map the facility and count how many Saddam Hussein loyalists were there.
. . .
The man slapped her, Mohammed said. "One, two," he added, making single slapping and back slap motions with his right hand. She was very brave, he recalled.
"My heart cut," Mohammed added, meaning stopped, putting his hand over his chest and grimacing. "There, I have decided to go to Americans to give them important information about the woman prisoner."
He walked into her room with his doctor friend. "I said 'Good morning.' She thought I was a doctor. I say, 'Don't worry.' She smiled," he recalled.
Fedayeen raided his house the next day, he said, taking away all his possessions and even his car, a Russian-made Muscovitch Brazilia 680. He said a neighbor was shot and her body dragged through the streets just for waving at a U.S. helicopter.
"Very bad people," he said. "There is no kindness in my heart for them."
. . .
"Believe me, not only I, all the people of Iraq, not the people in the government, like Americans," Mohammed said. "They want to help the Americans, but they are all afraid."
Thought you folks would appreciate this remarkable story.
The article doesn't mention Mohammed's faith, but one doesn't need "the gift" to figure it out. Or to recognize that Jessica Lynch's rescue would not have been possible without the courage and compassion of this Iraqi lawyer who risked his life and family to save her. She was a complete stranger to him, she was of a different faith, and she wore the uniform of a country he was taught to hate. Yet somehow Mohammed saw her as a fellow human being, wounded and beaten by cruel captors, and he risked everything to save her life.
Stories like this never cease to amaze, even as similar stories continually unfold in every corner of the world where evil tries to conquer good.
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."
Luke 10:29-37
I don't know to what extent, if any, Mohammed's religious beliefs influenced his decision to help Jessica. But I do know this: by his actions, this Iraqi Muslim proved himself a better neighbor to Jessica and a better Christian than many who profess to follow Christ while preaching a gospel of hate toward people like Mohammed.
Exactly, and as usual you're correct Mr. Wallace.
I tried to make a similar point once about a friend of mine, back when the Islam/Christianity debate broke out here on FR and all it earned me was flames. I wish I had worded it more akin to the way that you have here.
I don't know what these people are thinking, but killing or oppressing an innocent Muslim for his faith, is just as much a sin as doing same to a Christian, Nun or anyone else. God made em' all you know.
Amen. The justifications of the Muslim bashers on this forum never ceases to amaze me. The broadbrush that is used to paint ALL Muslims as evil is truely disgusting. Reading this story should be a lesson to them.
Thank you for pinging me to YOUR comments on this thread. You said a mouthful!
I'd like to see him in that place of historic honor next to PFC Jessica Lynch.
In honor of the late Michael Kelly:
I believe in this President.
I believe President Bush correctly identified state-sponsored terrorism as the real threat to our nation and way of life. I believe he means to rid the world of this scourge against humanity. I believe he will succeed.
I believe we are winning the war against terror. I believe the worst of the worst — bin Laden's al Qaeda network and its offshoots — are everywhere on the run and every day running out of places to hide.
I believe that not only the Iraqi people, but the entire world, will reap the benefits of George W. Bush's and Tony Blair's determination and leadership and that the scourge of state-sponsored terrorism will soon be consigned to the trash bin of history.
I believe most of the world will look this gift horse in the mouth and repay America and her coalition partners with derision and ingratitude. I believe the stakes are too high to pay a moment's attention to the tantrums of sniveling snot-nose Euro-trash who think themselves superior to us even as they continue to repeat past follies and we keep saving their collective backsides from the fire.
I believe those liberal elites who sneered at the President's Axis of Evil speech display their own monumental arrogance bred from abysmal ignorance. I believe contemporary liberalism has been permanently corrupted by abortion and Clintonism and what remains is a conspiracy of knaves and dunces.
I believe Iraq, North Korea and Iran are part of an Axis of Evil and that the world will soon be better off with one less totalitarian regime to worry about.
I believe the liberation of Iraq is imminent. I believe the long-suffering Iraqi people will soon enjoy for the first time the four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
I believe the long-overdue reckoning of Saddam Hussein's regime will send a message to other rogue states that the writing is on the wall, that their days of harboring and financing terror are numbered.
I believe the sacrifice of the heroes of September 11th — the police and firefighters and emergency workers in the rubble of Ground Zero and the Pentagon, of Todd Beamer and the other passengers of Flight 11 and our magnificent troops in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in other parts of the world — will not be in vain.
I believe in Ronald Reagan's vision of America as a shining city on a hill and a beacon of hope to captive people everywhere. I believe what President Reagan said, that America represents the last best hope for freedom on earth. I believe what President Bush said, that freedom is not America's gift to the world, but the birthright of all humanity.
I believe with this President that the Author of all creation is not indifferent in the struggle between good against evil. I believe that an Angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.
I believe that we did not start this war, but we will surely end it.
I believe we will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.
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