IRAQ: Marine, save my child, too

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With word spreading about the life-saving heart operation performed in the U.S. this week on a two-year-old Haditha girl, other Iraqis are begging Marines to help their sick children.

‘I had three just today,’ Maj. Kevin Jarrard, commander of Lima Company of 3rd battalion, 23rd regiment, said Wednesday. He spearheaded the effort to get Amenah to the U.S. for the surgery.

No promises have been made, but the cases have been turned over to Navy Capt. John Nadeau, the battalion surgeon who recognized Amenah’s condition and arranged for surgeons at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tenn., to treat her. Nadeau, a reservist, is on the faculty.

Nadeau has already found two hospitals possibly willing to help. ‘We’ll do what we can,’ Jarrard said.

— Tony Perry in Haditha