Star Tribune writer Paul McEnroe’s April 11 story from Kirkuk, Iraq, began:
“The dying Iraqi fighter looked deep into the faces of his intended victims — two American journalists — and with an outstretched hand whispered a plea, ‘Kaka, kaka’. . . .”
The caption to a picture taken by McEnroe’s colleague, photographer Richard Sennott, said:
“A mortally wounded Fedayeen Saddam fighter pleaded with his intended victims, two American journalists, to help him. Kurdish militia who shot the man Thursday outside Kirkuk left him to die.”
McEnroe wrote: “A minute or so before the picture was taken the Iraqi, a grenade in his right hand, had pleaded to Kurdish militiamen: “Just let me go — I won’t kill you. I want to kill the Americans.”
McEnroe’s story concluded: “The soldier . . . raised his hand up in desperation as the [Kurdish fighters] drove off with their cache, leaving him to die.”
Readers Jim Benda and Robert McLay, in the Navy medical corps reserve, were critical.
Benda wrote, “I find it repulsive that you show us a dying man and then leave us to wonder whether the man was left to die without any assistance of compassion.”
McLay wrote: “The reporters left him there to die and took pictures of his death throes. An enemy combatant, once removed as a direct threat, is as entitled to medical care as one of our own.” McEnroe responded:”First, Rick and I felt compassion for the dying fighter who had tried to kill us moments earlier.
“We also felt incredibly helpless because we were in a combat situation that was deteriorating by the minute. It turned out that we apparently were the first journalists inside the Kirkuk oil fields and, unbeknownst to us, that area had not been swept by Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers.
“I felt that the fighter, although severely wounded and asking for our help, was still a direct threat and that he may have had a bomb strapped on his body. The possibility of suicide bombers in the region was very real because of several previous attacks.
“It had crossed my mind repeatedly — while keeping an eye out for Rick’s safety while he photographed — that we might somehow figure a way to get the fighter to a medic.
“It also crossed my mind that if we did try to assist him by lifting him into our vehicle, he could kill us by blowing himself up. Or, he may have hidden a weapon on his body.
“Knowing that there were more fighters hiding behind the burning oil well, we decided that our safety came first.
“We do not know for sure what happened to the man. I suspect he died. It is a haunting feeling to know you left behind someone who is dying and I have sorted through that scene every day since. There are no good answers, I’ve decided.
“However, we later learned there is a slight chance the man may have lived: Rick’s brother, Charles Sennott of the Boston Globe, told us days later that he and other journalists came across a wounded man in the same area that we’d been in about an hour after we’d left.
“He said that militia were kicking a wounded man. He said that he and his colleagues convinced the militia to hail a cab. The wounded man was thrown into the trunk and the driver was given instructions to take the man to the hospital in Kirkuk. Again, we don’t know for sure if this was the same man who we left.”
