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The most powerful army in history is plagued by pesky guerilla attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. The opposition in each case is led by a man hooked to a dialysis machine. Please read Ben Tripp’s disturbing account of his run-in with Osama at the Rawalpindi Dialysis center and disco. And if you enjoyed that, you may want to read everything by Ben Tripp. And then read this from Patrick Cockburn.
In response to criticism that the US military has no idea who had carried out the attack on al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad last week and other assaults on US troops, high-level US officials said Saddam was playing a role in the resistance. US officials also claimed that Izzat Ibrahim, former chairman of the Revolution Command Council, was co-ordinating links between the resistance and al-Qa'ida.
However, the Iraqi official said: "Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri is old and sick, and not capable of co-ordinating anything. He was almost captured twice in Mosul because he needs to have dialysis regularly. In any case, he was never that important under Saddam Hussein."
Becky, my American little sister, had to go through dialysis for a few years. Three times a week she would have to be plugged into a machine the size of a small refrigerator for a few hours. The machine would suck all the blood out of her body, perform a few cleansing functions that her failing kidneys could no longer perform, and then pump it all back in. I went with her a few times, and was exhausted by the experience of just watching the process.
Becky is the strongest and most courageous person I have ever met. She would do her best to carry on with her day, and spread a little joy and cheer in this world. Some days she could only manage to read a few lines in her book, or write a couple in her journal. This left her no time to coordinate guerilla attacks against history’s most powerful army. She is a non-violent Buddhist, so she probably would not have wanted to anyway.
Dialysis is a debilitating process. Nobody wants to do it just for fun. People who have it done usually have the added burden of fighting a life threatening condition like leukemia or kidney failure. They might even have something like chemotherapy to further complicate things.
Osama was last seen riding off on a motorcycle driven by the blind Mullah Omar. The fridge-sized appliance under his left armpit was obscured by the large heroin factory in his right hand, and the 37 million acres of mobile poppy fields in the sidecar. Fiction is for the weak hearted (and kidneyed) who can't stomach this reality.
