For Seven Iraqis, A Vital Part of Life Is Restored

When he met the seven, North decided he would shed his role of detached observer. "I decided I wasn't going to leave it up to chance that some doctor who saw my documentary would offer to help," he said.

An oil engineer from Houston, Roger Brown, overheard North talking about the men in a Baghdad cafe. He suggested North contact Houston's "white knight in blue spectacles," famed TV newsman Marvin Zindler.

Zindler is the kind of institution only Texas could spawn: a woofer-voiced champion of underdogs and the underprivileged who sports white pants, a silver hairpiece and blue-tinted eyeglasses.

Although Zindler made his name with muckraking, populist journalism -- he uncovered the scandal memorialized in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" -- these days he uses his airtime on the ABC affiliate's "Eyewitness News" more to comfort the afflicted than to afflict the comfortable.

"Why'd we do this?" Zindler replies to a question. "Because the guys had their hands cut off."

Zindler is 82 but looks much younger thanks to 30 reconstructive surgeries. ("I was fired from my first TV job for being too ugly," he explains.) Those surgeries yielded a good friend in Joe Agris, Zindler's plastic surgeon. After talking to North, Zindler called Agris to get the good deeds rolling.

Agris, who has volunteered time in Vietnam and Nicaragua doing reconstructive surgery on children, rounded up the doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics to give the men new hands. North spent his days off making the logistical arrangements. It took months to line up all the benefactors and cut through the red tape, but by early April the amputees were bound for Houston.

The Methodist Hospital, the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research, and Dynamic Orthotics and Prosthetics in Houston donated the operating rooms, rehab and training; Houston-based Continental Airlines paid for the seven Iraqis' flight; the Marriott and Warwick hotel chains housed them; and the Minneapolis branch of a German prosthetics company, Otto Bock, provided the artificial hands.

The Iraqis were met with a surprise in their first days in Texas: the prospect of another round of surgeries to further shorten their arms. Agris and another surgeon he'd enlisted, Fred Kestler, determined that the Abu Ghraib surgeries had left the men with far too much real pain and "phantom pain" -- painful sensations where the limb used to be. Operations were needed to repair the nerves and create a new, smooth surface for the artificial hands.

Last week, the men had recovered enough for the final fitting of their bionic hands, microprocessor-assisted marvels that receive instructions from the brain via electrodes attached to muscles in the arm. The Iraqis are training themselves to fire the right muscles to control hand functions, a process that will take months. Already, they can throw balls, shake hands, raise a glass.

Agris and North will go back to Baghdad with the seven in early June to make sure they have the proper medical support. Agris has arranged to visit other amputees, and he will help Baghdad hospitals upgrade their knowledge about amputations and prosthetics.

"The thing that'll win hearts and minds is the humanitarian effort, not guns," Agris said. "You take care of someone's child, not only do you help the child but you win over the family. And the family talks to the neighbors and you win over the neighbors. It just escalates."

He thinks Al Fadhly, Joudi, Kadhim, Salah and the other three men -- Laith Aggar, Hassan Al Gereawy and Al'aa Hassan -- will change some minds, too.

"I think we're going to see a ripple effect, especially with a guy like Al Fadhly who's got a job working for the coalition's new TV station. They're bringing back a different attitude, a different look."