This latest Iraq Health and Infrastructure Digest #12 is a compilation of 9 articles covering a wide range of issues facing people in Iraq. Summaries are given as well as the full, or relevant portion of the articles.

Digest by David Smith-Ferri, Voices in the Wilderness

By Mike Ferner

“That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war,” Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans For Peace at their annual convention in Dallas last Friday evening. She then announced she would go to Bush’s vacation home in nearby Crawford, Texas and camp out until he “tells me why my son died in Iraq. I’ve got the whole month of August off, and so does he.”

Sister Anne Montgomery examines the damage done to Yarmouk college, Iraq (photo: CPT)

New York Times
By Ian Urbina

In a place where everything seems broken, she has been a fixer. At a time when most other American civilians were leaving the country, she was just arriving.

Sister Anne Montgomery, a 78-year-old nun, avoided the United States-patrolled Green Zone when she moved to Baghdad, opting instead to live in Karada, a mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhood across the Tigris River from the American Embassy.

“You can’t possibly do the type of work we sought to do with Iraqi civilians unless you live with them,” she said in a recent interview from her home in East Harlem. She rotated into and out of Iraq regularly, from soon after the war started until April, when she returned home to take a break and get treatment for skin cancer.

As a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, an ecumenical antiwar group based in Chicago and Toronto, Sister Montgomery was among the handful of American civilians still based in Baghdad last year and early this year.

Monica Bendermann meets with reporters, July 29, 2005. (photo: Maritza Mejía )

August 1, 2005
www.bendermandefense.org
Dear friends:

The Army has found Sgt. Kevin Benderman not guilty of Desertion, but guilty of Missing Movement, and has sentenced him to 15 months confinement, reduction in rank, loss of pay and dishonorable discharge.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman will serve his time, but he will do it knowing that he has done nothing wrong - that his is a stand, not only for Conscientious Objection and a non-violent resolution to our problems, but also for the right of soldiers to be treated with respect, to be given the honor they deserve, and to have the sacrifice that they have made in their service to this country met with equal sacrifice by those they have volunteered to defend.

War is dehumanizing in all aspects. There is nothing about war that can bring lasting peace. It is not until we learn to lay down our weapons and face our differences with rational conflict resolution, confident strength in not backing down from our principles, and a strong stand for what we truly believe, that we will ever have the freedom we desire.

by Peggy Gish
Christian Peacemaker Teams

We planned to spend the evening and night with a renowned writer, Halla,* and her family and friends. Three CPT women would sleep with her on the roof of her Baghdad home and see her off early the next morning to her birth country, Syria, where she would reunite with her sister, daughter and their families.

It would be Halla’s first time to see her three grandchildren. Because she had married an Iraqi of Palestinian origin, she had not been able to travel outside Iraq for over twenty years. Her son, who had been imprisoned for eleven months in Iraq under US forces, had been released, and she was finally recovering from the cloud of grief and worry this caused her. Her family and friends were here to share in her joy and hope for new possibilities in her life.