BALAD, Iraq, May 19, 2004 — An 8-month-old Iraqi girl has a new lease on life thanks to U.S. officials on both sides of the Atlantic who cut through mounds of red tape to set up surgery to remove a large birth defect.

Early May 18, Fatemah Hassan and her 21-year-old mother, Baday Amir Abdel-Jabar boarded a military aircraft en route to Germany. After a brief layover, they'll continue on to Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, for the surgery.

Without surgery at Children's Hospital, officials fear the baby girl may die from a cavernous hemangioma, an abnormal growth of a blood vessel on the right side of her face and neck.

Shortly before 8 p.m., May 14, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller's office advised that Fatemah receive the desperate medical treatment back in Ohio.

Fatemah's mother and father, Khaleel, sought help from U.S. soldiers deployed near their

hometown in Mandali not far from the Iranian border. The couple took their only daughter to the front gate of Forward Operating Base Rough Rider. There they pled for medical help for their daughter.

Lt. Col. Todd Fredricks, a West Virginia Army National Guard member with the 1 st Battalion, 150 th Armor, knew influential people with Ohio State University at Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who helped answer their prayers. After seeing Fatemah at the Rough Rider clinic, Fredricks worked with the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in Baghdad and the Coalition Provisional Authority to seek medical attention back in the United States for the baby.

Dr. Gayle Gordillo, a pediatric and plastic, reconstructive surgeon at the Columbus-based hospital, persuaded the medical facility's board of directors to waive all costs for Fatemah's surgery.

Gordillo is slated to remove the birth defect and perform the reconstructive surgery.