From an Iraqi

I stumbled on this and wanted to preserve it here:

"Two pictures can make big difference

Before few days, I was walking in down town when a group of American forces accompanied by Iraqi national forces are searching a certain place in the market.
Usually in this kind of events you see only tough faces of American soldiers only holding their weapons in stand by action, suddenly, I saw a young American soldier who was holding his gun on his shoulder, smiling for people and even shaking hands of few Iraqis who were moving a round, and then I saw him saying hello with big smile on his face when he saw a young kid with a bandage covering his broken arm.
This scene reminded me with all times that we spent in war times in the last twenty five years , most of us are holding a human feelings even in war frontiers , we were obliged to go to war , but from inside we were not ready to cause any harm even to our supposed enemy ( by our leadership ).
I figured out that the world can see only the military uniform of any soldier but can’t see the inside of this soldier. To give you an example, the world talked too much and can recall very easily Lynndie England, the American soldier that was responsible for Iraqi prisoner’s abuse. See the picture.
But very rare to hear or see in many occasions that there is always a human beings inside the uniform who are against the Wars, and they feel very sorry for being in war frontier seeing much blood and sadness of death and may be they have no choice but to go and fight in any war see this picture for a kid who was killed on May 2, 2005 in Mosul after a suicide exploded himself killing 8 people.
Being a subjective and neutral blogger , we must give truth in subjective and neutral way beyond our emotional estimation , and this kind of coverage cannot be seen in Media that is affected by political limitations and objects.


a reply:

You might be interested in this firsthand information from the photographer who took that photo of the soldier carrying the little Iraqi girl:

Mosul

Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids. Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn't make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away. He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.

The soldiers went back to that neighborhood the next day to ask what they could do. The people were very warming and welcomed us into their homes, and many kids were actually running up to say hello and ask soldiers to shake hands.

Eventually, some insurgents must have realized we were back and started shooting at us. The American soldiers and Iraqi police started engaging the enemy and there was a running gun battle. I saw at least one IP who was shot, but he looked okay and actually smiled at me despite the big bullet hole in his leg. I smiled back.

One thing seems certain; the people in that neighborhood share our feelings about the terrorists. We are going to go back there, and if any terrorists come out, the soldiers hope to find them. Everybody is still very angry that the insurgents attacked us when the kids were around. Their