Straight Up with Sherri

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Miss Mae Hits Birmingham News!

After days without water, nourishment, woman at UAB

Sunday, April 10, 2005

VIVI ABRAMS
News staff writer

An 81-year-old Georgia woman who went without nourishment and water more than a week was airlifted from a LaGrange hospice to UAB Hospital Saturday to begin treatment, relatives said.

Ora Mae Magouirk suffered from a heart ailment and a LaGrange hospice was preparing her to die under orders from her physician and her grandchildren, Beth Gaddy and Michael Shane Magouirk, said nephew Kenneth Mullinax of Birmingham.

The grandchildren fought efforts to have her moved from the hospice. The dispute has divided the family, and Alabama relatives have begun to contact supporters and attorneys of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died last month after 15 years connected to a feeding tube.

Ora Mae Magouirk was awake and not in a persistent vegetative state, nor was she terminally ill, and her living will specified that she only wanted a feeding tube removed if she was in a coma or vegetative state, Mullinax said.

A LaGrange probate judge on Monday ordered three doctors, including one UAB cardiologist, to decide her future. They decided late Friday that the heart condition was treatable and had her airlifted Saturday morning, Mullinax said.

Mullinax said he is thrilled that his aunt is at UAB receiving care.

"Hospice is only for the dying, and my aunt has many more years to live," he said. "A crime was being committed by having a person in a hospice who was not terminally ill. I hope that this never ever happens again."

Grandson Michael Shane Magouirk, contacted in LaGrange Saturday night, declined to comment.

E-mail: vabrams@bhamnews.com News staff writer Lisa Osburn contributed to this report.

6 Comments:

  • So, how do we condone this?:

    Aiden Delgado, an Army Reservist in the 320th Military Police Company, served in Iraq from April 1st , 2003 through April 1st, 2004. After spending six months in Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq, he spent six months helping to run the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.

    I first met Delgado in a classroom at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, where he presented a slide show on the atrocities that he himself observed in Southern and Northern Iraq.

    Delgado says he observed mutilation of the dead, trophy photos of dead Iraqis, mass roundups of innocent noncombatants, positioning of prisoners in the line of fire - all violations of the Geneva conventions. His own buddies - decent, Christian men, as he describes them - shot unarmed prisoners.

    In one government class for seniors, Delgado presented graphic images, his own photos of a soldier playing with a skull, the charred remains of children, kids riddled with bullets, a soldier from his unit scooping out the brains of a prisoner.

    When I interviewed Delgado recently, he expressed his deep love of his country, but he also insisted that racism - a major impetus to violence in American history - is driving the occupation, infecting the entire military operation in Iraq.Here is Aiden Delgado story.

    Q: When did you begin to turn against the military and the war?

    DELGADO: From the very earliest time I was in Iraq, I began to see ugly strains of racism among our troops--anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiments.

    Q: What are some examples?

    DELGADO: There was a Master Sergeant. A Master Sergeant is one of the highest enlisted ranks. He whipped this group of Iraqi children with a steel Humvee antenna. He just lashed them with it because they were crowding around, bothering him, and he was tired of talking. Another time, a Marine, a Lance Corporal - a big guy about six-foot-two - planted a boot on a kid's chest, when a kid came up to him and asked him for a soda. The First Sergeant said, "That won't be necessary Lance Corporal." And that was the end of that. It was a matter of routine for guys in my unit to drive by in a Humvee and shatter bottles over Iraqis heads as they went by. And these were guys I considered friends. And I told them:" What the hell are you doing? What does that accomplish?" One said back:" I hate being here. I hate looking at them. I hate being surrounded by all these Hajjis."

    Q: When you arrived at Abu Ghraib, what did you see, beyond what we all learned from the scandal in the news? And how were you affected?

    DELGADO:..The prisoners were housed outside in tents, 60 to 80 prisoners per tent. It rained a lot. The detainees lived in the mud. It was freezing cold outside, and the prisoners had no cold-weather clothing. Our soldiers lived inside in cells, with four walls that protected us from the bombardment. The Military Police used the cold weather to control the prisoners. If there was an infraction, detainees would be removed from their tents. Next, their blankets were confiscated. Then even their clothing was taken away. Almost naked, in underwear, the POWs would huddle together on a platform outside to keep warm. There was overcrowding, and almost everyone got TB. Eighteen members of our unit who worked closely with the prisoners got TB too. The food was rotten and prisoners got dysentery. The unsanitary conditions, the debris and muck everywhere, the overcrowding in cold weather, led to disease, an epidemic, pandemic conditions. The attitude of the guards was brutal. To them Iraqis were the scum of the earth. Detainees were beaten within inches of their life.

    DELGADO: T...He showed me these grisly photographs, and he bragged about the results. "Oh," he said, "I shot this guy in the face. See, his head is split open." He talked like the Terminator. `I shot this guy in the groin, he took three days to bleed to death." I was shocked. This was the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. He was a family man, a really courteous guy, a devout Christian. I was stunned and said to him: "You shot an unarmed man behind barbed wire for throwing a stone." He said, "Well, I knelt down. I said a prayer, stood up and gunned them all down."

    Q: Commanders permitted use of lethal force against unarmed detainees. What was their response to the carnage?

    DELGADO: Our Command took the grisly photos and posted them up in the headquarters. It was a big, macho thing for our company to shoot more prisoners than any other unit.

    Q: When did all this happen?

    DELGADO: November 24th. The event was actually mentioned in the Taguba Report, under Protocol Golden Spike. And there's more... I got photos from the guy who was there, my friend. I have a photo of a member of my unit, scooping out the prisoner's brains with an MRE [meals-ready-to-eat] spoon. Four people are looking on, two are taking photographs. If you remember the Abu Ghraib stuff that came out on CNN, this kind of stuff was common. You see guys posing with bodies, or toying with corpses. It was a real common thing in the military, all because the guys thought Arabs are terrorists, the scum of the earth. Anything we do to them is all right.

    Q: So far as I know, no commanders have been held accountable for events at Abu Ghraib. Your story implicates commanders...

    DELGADO: After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke on CNN and TV, commanders came out to us and said: "We are all family here. We don't wash our dirty linen in public. This story doesn't need to go on CNN. Nobody needs to find out about this." There was a sort of informal gag order.

    from: http://www.blackcommentator.com/
    133/133_think_racism_military.html

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:23 PM  

  • I have NO IDEA WHAT YOUR POINT IS!

    HONESTLY-- NO IDEA!

    By Blogger Straight Up with Sherri, at 8:29 PM  

  • Yet another example showing we need a RWNJ blog instead of a Sherri blog.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:38 PM  

  • RWNJ

    THEY LOVE YOU!!

    I told ya!

    By Blogger Straight Up with Sherri, at 8:48 PM  

  • Hey Sherri just the usual dummy who has nothing to add so he tries to change the subject. His ubsubstatiated charges remind me of the false stories of widespread atrocites spread by John Fraud Kerry and his communist friends. As a former veteran who knows our high standards for conduct I do know that if any of these allegations are true they are subject to due process and will be investigated and prosecuted if nessesary. Lt Calley did not get away with what happened because American solders reported the atrocities and an investigation was begun immediately.

    By Blogger Alnot, at 9:56 PM  

  • I FOUND IT INTERESTING

    DW7448

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:32 AM  

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