To the editor:

Yet another shameful misdeed may be chalked up for the Americans who are occupying Iraq. Before dawn on March 15, U.S. soldiers were fired upon as they attempted to raid a house in the village of Ishaqi. Rather than risk casualties, the soldiers decided to bomb the house, and everyone in it. The result? Eleven people killed, five of them children and four women, crushed to death in their home. A haunting photograph shows the devastated faces of three men as the fourth holds the lifeless body of a 3-year-old girl with pink clips in her hair.

According to reports, the U.S. military has bombed at least 22 Iraqi towns in the last five months, resorting increasingly to aerial attacks. Iraqis tell reporters that the victims of “unjustified and random” bombing “hate the American occupiers who demolished their houses with bombs and killed their families … and now want to join the resistance against the Americans for what they did.”

By arming one sect while simultaneously fighting another, the United States is railroading Iraq straight into an even bigger bloodbath. Our military is not “saving” anyone or anything in Iraq; its brutal tactics are doing far more harm than good and are sure to result in more attacks on (and disgust toward) Americans across the globe. Its continued presence and its heartless actions are the cause of both the violence against itself and between Iraqis – in other words, our people are killing, being killed and causing yet more killing, all for nothing.

Eric Matney,

Lawrence