American good deeds in Iraq

Recently I posted this article about "Spirit of America appeal raises staggering $1.5 million!"

In case you missed it, Jim Hake set out to raise $100,000 to buy some TV equipment - to let local Iraqi stations air local news. Much of that news is good, but much as the news of gang shootings in Pico-Union creates panic in West Los Angeles, the bad news there tends to drive out the good. Allowing some old-fashioned local news coverage - of rescuers working to save girls stuck in wells, local sports heroes, all the banal stuff that everyday life is so deliciously made up from - offers the chance to remind people that life is not sliding downhill quite the way some might fear

Now from Fox News comes this:

Young Iraqi Cancer Patient Needs Help Fast

Nicknamed Una, the 15-year-old girl has an aggressive form of cancer in her brain stem. In just three months, the disease has wracked her body and she struggles to move and even talk. And she needs help fast.

"The local doctors advised me to take her home and wait," Una's father said. "There is nothing more they could do."

But Una's parents didn't give up. They got the Minister of Health involved, who got the attention of U.S.-led coalition officials, who turned to American doctors at the military's combat hospital in Baghdad.

Coalition doctors performed emergency surgery to relieve the pressure in Una's brain but it did nothing for the tumor, which if untreated, will kill the tenth grader in weeks. But with specialized surgery and radiation available in the United States, however, Una may get another 10 years of life or more.

Una's father said through a translator that he had never had any dealings with Americans before but that what he saw in the movies "was real. That Americans don't hesitate to do what's asked of them."

This is the real "Spirit of America", not the prisoner abuses we are hearing so much about.

People interested in contributing to travel and living expenses for Una and her family can make donations to:

Una Fund

c/o Thomas C. Ruff Jr. & Assoc., Atty.

201 McCullough Drive, Suite 130

Charlotte, NC 28262