Death and lose is felt no matter the people involved. Nothing goes unnoticed in this country by someone. The USA has a high level of compassion. Most of us realize when wrong doing politically has cost others profound pain.
What is never said at times like this for the USA, and is echoed in other countries, is the fact tragedy happens in profoundly avertable ways throughout the world daily, as in Africa. I don't discriminate when death is a reality in life.
It should not be said people around this globe are lost sight of on any day.
The people in West Virginia had a very cruel trick played on them. Unintentional or not there is a difference between a military officer coming to the door with news of a death and what happened early this morning. It's a cruelty I have never experienced and dearly don't ever want to either. They are sincere and dear people. An injustice beyond their deepest fears occurred. It is that which is alarming and a concern for them uniquely today. No doubt the family of Iraqis here had a terrible alarm in their lives as well. There are those of us whom abhor both.
Iraq: Family of 12 killed in U.S. strike on house
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Salih Saif Aldin
The Washington Post
Published January 4, 2006
BAGHDAD -- U.S. pilots targeting a house where they believed insurgents had taken shelter killed a family of 12 late Monday, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. The dead included children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping.
A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 and three women were removed Tuesday from the house outside Beiji, north of Baghdad.
A U.S. military spokesman said that U.S. forces take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties and that they are working with Iraqi authorities to determine what happened at the farmhouse in Beiji."
We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman, wrote in an e-mail.
Associated Press Television News showed footage of men carrying several bodies, wrapped in carpets, from the wreckage of the house. The men chanted ritual prayers: "There is no god but God."
The U.S. has steadily intensified its use of air strikes against insurgents in Iraq in the past year, increasing the number of attacks from 25 in January 2005 to 120 in November.
The U.S. military says that it does not count civilian deaths from American attacks, and that investigating deaths caused by any one strike is often impractical in dangerous insurgent areas. But some analysts say the U.S. military should make a systematic effort, both to test the reliability of its intelligence and to better learn how to reduce civilian casualties.
On Tuesday, Johnson said the U.S. military was trying to do that in regard to the Beiji attack. U.S. forces received the information leading to the attack from multiple sources, including existing intelligence and direct observation at the time of the strike, Johnson wrote.
A U.S. military statement said that a U.S. drone detected three men digging a hole in a road in the area. Insurgents regularly bury bombs along roads in the area to target U.S. and Iraqi convoys. The three men were tracked to a building, which U.S. forces then bombed, the statement said.
Maj. Abdul Jabbar Kaissi, a security officer in Salahuddin province, said the air strike killed the family of his relative, Ghadban Nahi Kaissi, who is also a relative of Salahuddin Gov. Ahmad Mahmud Kaissi.
Separately on Tuesday, top Iraqi police officials in the southern city of Basra said an Iranian citizen was among three men detained in a raid Sunday that uncovered a large amount of arms and explosives. One of the officials said some of the seized ordnance had markings showing it to have been made in Iran. The raid was in Nashwa, east of Basra, near the Iran-Iraq border.
