ER=Emergency relief

International | The embattled Franklin Graham sends aid to Iraq despite a welter of hand-wringing over what it will do to Muslim-Christian relations | Mindy Belz

Diar Ali's emergency room has eight vinyl beds with no sheets. Green curtains hang limp between the beds, a fig's leaf of privacy for the Shiite women who arrive heavily veiled.

This hospital is one of the biggest in Baghdad, but it's never had the reputation for being one of the best. Private hospitals, like the Catholic hospital in East Baghdad, are more prestigious. And favorites of Saddam's former inner circle, like Olympic Hospital, run by his son Uday, catered only to the rich and favored. In prewar days Olympic routinely imported specialists from France.

Shoddy facilities did not prevent locals from overwhelming Dr. Ali's government-run facility during the war. It became a reception center—and a dumping ground—for Baghdad's dead and wounded. The neighborhood that surrounds it saw some of the worst bombardment; U.S. forces dropped four bunker-busters in April not far away at a restaurant where they believed Saddam was meeting.