Reply #21: I think some of the "militants" are the ones who explode bombs

[pampango]

in markets and around job seekers and shoot students at a girls' school. I would submit that people who commit these atrocities would be targeted in most countries in the world.

Other "militants" actually target the occupying military which gives them more moral authority than those who kill Iraqis indiscriminately, not as "collateral damage" (our inhuman term), but as the specific goal of their attacks. The more civilian deaths the better to show how bad the Americans are.

Any surviving members of the French resistance must be kicking themselves now that they realize they wasted much of their time attacking the German occupiers rather than killing French civilians in large numbers. The Iraqi "militants" look like they are much closer to getting rid of the occupiers than the French resistance ever did.

Bush illegally and immorally invaded a sovereign country whose dictator was very good at controlling his people and keeping a lid on the sectarian violence. By doing this he created the conditions in which this violence has flourished. As much as he deserves the ultimate blame for the aftermath, I do not in any way minimize the culpability of the butchers who believe that girls attending school and people shopping are legitimate targets in order to prove that another country is bad.