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Still more attacks and kidnapping in Iraq, with an American victim this time. From VOA News, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
Insurgents in Iraq launched a wave of suicide attacks against U.S. forces and kidnapped an American contractor Monday.
A spokesman for the U.S. embassy says the contractor was abducted near Baghdad.
Earlier, suicide bombers blew up three vehicles at the entrance to a U.S. base in western Iraq. Three U.S. Marines and three Iraqi civilians were wounded. Insurgents in another vehicle opened fire on the base before a U.S. helicopter destroyed their car.
And in Samarra, a suicide car bomber killed three people and wounded 20 others when his vehicle exploded near a U.S. convoy.
Meanwhile, media reports say the U.S. Defense Department may withdraw tens of thousands of troops from Iraq by early next year.
Posted by Robert at April 11, 2005 5:47 PM
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This is sad news, the next time we see the man will be on one of their snuff films.
Posted by: Carolyn2![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 11, 2005 5:58 PM
MORE SAD NEWS. US HAS WORST GUN CRIME OF ANY INDUSTRIALIZED NATION. NOT A SAFE COUNTRY TO LIVE IN.
Monday April 11, 07:55 PM
U.S. gun victims speak out
CHICAGO (Reuters) - In America's epidemic of gun violence, the worst of any industrialized nation, the dead make news but the wounded are soon forgotten.
With firearms mayhem in the headlines almost daily, from a Minnesota Indian reservation to an Atlanta courtroom and recent random shooting sprees in Texas and on the East Coast, it is the wounded who go on living -- a half million of them in recent years by one estimate.
Some of them are speaking out, in raw black and white essays and photos on display at Chicago's Peace Museum (http://www.peacemuseum.org).
"I touched my face and saw the blood on my hand," says Ciara Padilla, who was 4 when shots from a drive-by gunman tore into her Dallas home.
The bullet "went in the top of my head, under the skin, so it didn't go into my brain. I just waited to be with my mom and dad so I wouldn't be alone," she adds. The camera caught her on a bench in front of a paint-peeled piano topped by a scarf and family photos, in the same home where she was shot in 1997.
There are about 50 stories like hers, captured in photos by Robert Drea and in the victim's own words by writer Stephanie Arena, each reduced to a display about the size of small window, each relentless in its honesty, pain and simplicity.
"I opened the door," recalls Tierra Varnado of New Orleans. "I don't remember the bullet hitting me. I remember going to the hospital." She was 12 in 2002 when a man invaded her home in a dispute with a member of her family. He carried an AK-47, killed two in her family and shot her in the head and face.
"I don't know if I did raise my hand or not but my grandma and mama told me I did. I was in the hospital for two months. My hand's all right ... right now I can't do much with it, but I be practicing," she says, her big eyes soft and haunting.
Joel Irizarry sits in a wheelchair in a Chicago neighbourhood where an attack by a rival gang sent a bullet into his spine in 1998 at age 17.
"Once in a while you get to thinking, what if? What would my life be? That stings," he says. "Every once in a while you'll daydream. If it hadn't happened, where would I be now?"
From Edina, Minnesota, policeman Mike Blood, recalls a bank robbery suspect who turned his gun on him in November 2000: "I was thinking I have to stay alive. I was shot four times in my hip, my leg and two more times in my back. I had only 29 days left on the force before I retired."
NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE
Grief spills from the words of Glenda Meraz of Huntington, California, whose estranged husband killed their 1-year-old daughter out of revenge in 1998 and them himself. She was then attacked by the man's brother who gunned her down on a city street.
Near death, she says, she saw a wooden door and heard a tapping. "I heard a softly low voice that said Ma? I knew it was her," she said of her lost daughter. But sirens wailed and her near-death experience faded.
"When my doctors see me they always tell me how lucky I am to be alive," she says, he sad eyes telling a different story.
In Portland, Oregon, artist Lonnie Feather recalls the day she confronted her boyfriend about a $30,000 (16,000 pounds) debt he had run up on her credit cards. He returned with a gun.
"He aimed the gun at my head. I remember two shots but my brain was still working ... he put a pillow over my head and fired into the pillow. Three bullets hit my head, one hit the wall." She suffered no permanent disabilities.
Arena and Drea, a Chicago-based husband and wife team, cite U.S. government figures for 2000 which show that 28,663 people were killed by gunfire of all kinds, including accidents, and nearly twice that many, 57,509, were wounded.
According to data published by the Canadian government's Health Canada, the gun death rate in the United States is 13.4 per 100,000 population, the highest among 25 industrialized nations. The lowest is Japan's at .07 per 100,000.
The exhibit moves to Sacramento, California, later this year and to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, next year, among other venues. Arena and Drea have been working on the expanding exhibit since 2001.
While about 500 people have visited the exhibit since it was mounted in Chicago a month ago, the museum's location -- a field house at a public park in the middle of Chicago's crime-scarred West Side -- is ironically remote for many.
This is the fullest showing of the exhibit, which has been mounted in a few academic and medical settings in the past few years. They have funding to add stories from victims from Memphis and hope to add those of people in Washington, D.C., Florida, and other states.
at April 11, 2005 6:13 PM
MORE SAD NEWS. US HAS WORST GUN CRIME OF ANY INDUSTRIALIZED NATION. NOT A SAFE COUNTRY TO LIVE IN.
I agree Whitequeen! All muslims should leave immediately. Don't even think of immigrating to the USA, we are shooting people at record numbers.
Notice who shoots their weapons straight up in the air when celebrating, seems as though all "palestinians" are carrying automatic weapons. Do muslims believe in gravity?
at April 11, 2005 6:47 PM
whitequeen,
I agree with Carolyn2, stay out of the U.S.! Go to England, where they have banned handguns!
And have I got a fella for you! A nice Muslim boy from the U.K. using the posting ID: ia786
His email address is:
ia786@hotmail.uk
He is as afraid of guns as you, loves chatting up, and thinks he looks a lot like Saladin (even though he isn't a Kurd, as far as I recall).
Ask him about Mohammad's miraculous "iron".
Good luck to you crazy kids!
Meanwhile, excuse me, but I have to get back to lubricating my Glock.
Posted by: BigSleep at April 12, 2005 12:43 AM
Ramaz, Whitequeen is a well known muslim poster here at JW. HE/She posted the "bad America" post to show all that we as Americans are as bad as muslims or worse. So I agree with WQ, don't come here! Stay in the safe middle east where we know there just isn't any gun totin'. LOL
Posted by: Carolyn2 at April 12, 2005 1:00 AM
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