A video, filmed by two American servicemen, shows just a few of the human casualties of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima. This film footage is important, not only for historical reasons, but for modern ones. The U.S. has weapons that inflict the same amount of human damage--minus the radiation--on civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Yeman. We in the U.S. rarely see photos of Iraq civilians injured by U.S. military operations, but many have suffered severe burns similar to those shown in this footage.
Here is a video of injured Iraq children. Note the similarity of the injuries to those in the Hiroshima video.
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As an aside, the only Iraq child whose injuries were widely covered in the U.S. was Ali Abbas, the boy who lost both of his arms in an American bombing. My impression is that the only reason his situation got press coverage was that it was covered so widely in other countries and, because of the Internet, millions of Americans learned of it, making it impossible for the U.S. press to ignore. The disgraceful 60 Minutes did two segments on him, both so upbeat and positive it made me want to retch. He has got to have post-traumatic stress disorder and bouts of severe depression. He will never embrace his wife or hold his children, if he ever has any. Yet the 60 Minutes pieces never mentioned those facts at all. Instead, they filmed him playing and saying he liked British girls. The underlying message was that it really wasn't so bad losing both your arms in an American bombing.
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