Medical help for Iraqi's
 

I was watching a documentary on Nova last night that followed the deployment of Army medical teams at the outset of OIF and I was disturbed at what I saw.

According to the Doctors interviewed said that they could provide treatments to Iraqi's only under the following conditions. They had to face the immediate risk of dying, losing a limb or their eyesight or their wounds had to be directly caused by our troops.

While it makes sense to restrict aid to only the most seriously wounded so that our medical staff has the rseources to focus on wounded US troops it's real world application seemed stupid in my humble unimformed opinion.

The problem is that our Doctors were turning away injuried Iraqi civilians because they weren't critical or because their wounds were the direct result of US actions but we were providing care to Iraqi insurgents/soldiers who were directly involved with trying to kill our troops because we caused their injuries. Wouldn't make more sense to force combatants back into the decimated Iraqi healthcare system while releaving that system of non-combatant injuries?

This makes no sense to me. Turn away potential allies while rendering aid to those who openly oppose our forces. Wouldn't it make more sense to send the message that if you get hurt fighting us don't expect any help while at the same time saying that we want to help all non-combatants.

I don't know if things have changed since the story was filled but it just seemed to be ass backwards.

Medical units are deployed as part of a force package, based on the number and type of other forces deployed. They are not usually deployed in excess to handle to treat anticipated civilian casualties. Furthermore the Iraqi civilian hospital system, while dilapidated, was intact. Obviously, any sane person would rather be treated by US doctors and our medical systemn than their own. This tends to overload our care system regardless of casualties.

Once these civilians are in US care, they get treated the same as US personnel.

Frankly, I do not want to be the one to write SSG Schmidlap's wife and kids and tell them that their husband died because we had a bunch of enemy civilians with malnutrition in the beds, and no room for their husband/father/son.

The Geneva and Hague Conventions prescribe health care responsibilities for non-combatants, we are responsible for them.

Once combat is over, an assessment of the indig hospital and health care system is made, and the effort directed at getting the civilian care facilities back on line ASAP.

HTH.

TR

Thanks for the reply. I guess what got me so pissed off is that an insurgent who was wounded while in combat with US Troops was entitled to treatment while an Iraqi citizen who was wounded by the actions of insurgents wasn't. I by no means would ever advocate that the health and the welfare of our troops be placed behind any Iraqi combatant or not.