To the editor:

I really can’t decide what is more disheartening about the news story regarding the “young Iraqi woman” who was allegedly raped and killed by U.S. soldiers: the fact that there are armed Americans running around Iraq who evidently don’t view Arab females as human, or the fact that the news media tries to mitigate the magnitude of their alleged crime by referring to the victim as a “woman.”

She wasn’t a young woman; her birth date (as listed on the death certificate) is Aug. 19, 1991. That made her 14 years old, not old enough to drive, not old enough to vote, not old enough to consent, not old enough to marry and certainly not old enough to be called a “young woman.”

Let’s keep the facts straight here, and let’s not soften the horror by aging the victim semantically. She was a 14-year-old girl.

Angela Richmond,

Lawrence