In fact, all Iraqis should steer well clear of American soldiers in order to avoid being caught up in resistance attacks. This is also further proof that the foreign occupation is responsible for these deaths, as they would not occur if they were not there in the first place. You can find many pictures of American war criminals luring children around them by searching the Internet. For example, you can search for “American soldiers and Iraqi children” on the “Images” function on either Yahoo or Google.

The fact is, it may be difficult for a suicide bomber, all set and prepared for a mission where he is going to die, to pick and choose which Americans to hit. We don’t know how many suicide bombes have aborted missions when they have seen too many innocent Iraqi bystanders. Perhaps targets are selected as carefully as possible to avoid “collateral damage”. Perhaps this particular bomber didn’t see the children, or it was too late to withdraw. A target may be carefully selected then at the last moment innocent people stumble into the area. In any case, a suicide attacker, being very conspicuous, cannot risk wandering around for too long looking for the best possible target for fear of discovery.

Proof that suicide bombers are not targeting innocent people was provided by Time magazine’s recent interview of a suicide bomber in training. The bomber said, “I pray no innocent people are killed in my mission…” He said that he would prefer his operation to be a car bombing targeting US soldiers or Iraq security forces.2

However, if only the Americans were so careful when they launch wars and bombing campaigns around the world. America excuses its killing by saying that they were not targeting civilians, although they know very well that by bombing a particular target innocent people will be killed. That’s why they invented the term “collateral damage” in Vietnam to whitewash its killing of millions of people around the world while dropping millions of tons of bombs.

Who can forget the last split seconds of video footage from a NATO missile as it slammed into a passenger train in April 1999 during their terror bombing campaign of Yugoslavia? 55 innocent civilians were killed in this terrible act (see second photo above). That this one attack equalled the London bombings puts those bombings in proper conyext and is a good example of the terrorism and suffering the West is responsible for.

While some defend NATO by saying it did not specifically target the passenger train, the same can be said for the suicide bomber who unfortunately killed the Iraqi children. It was a regrettable incident in a war America started by unjustifiably and illegally invading Iraq. Of course, during NATO’s bombing against Yugoslavia, the Western media happily passed on NATO propaganda that spoke of “blunders” and “mistakes”.3 Professor Edward S. Herman had the following to say about this act of NATO terrorism:

When Nato bombed a passenger train on April 12, killing 55 civilians, reporters were shown a videotape by Nato that “proved” the train was going to fast for the trajectory of the missiles to be altered. Recently it was disclosed that Nato had played the videotape at three times its normal speed--but the reporters who had been taken in by this trick earlier did not find this acknowledgement of Nato disinformation newsworthy, and of course did not cause them to reflect on the possible existence of a Nato “lie machine”.4

Professor Howard Zinn had the following to say about NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and the same can be said about American bombing in Iraq:

Isn’t it time we stopped using the word “'accidental”' to describe the NATO bombing of Yugoslavian hospitals, residential neighborhoods, buses, trains, trucks, and refugees on roads that has killed or maimed at least 1,000 civilians, including children?5

During the American invasion of Iraq, US air commanders were given a blanket approval to hit targets as long as the estimated civilian death toll was less than 30. If more than 30 victims was expected, then approval for the air strike had to be sought from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He approved all such requests of which there were more than 50. Any innocent victims were then simply dismissed as “collateral damage”, “unavoidable”, “regrettable” etc.

After all, the great many innocent civilians America kills have never deterred them from their campaign of worldwide imperialism. In fact, Americans who support their government’s wars hardly even care about the innocent people they kill. Just remember the evil comments of one of their biggest TV personalities, Bill O’Reilly of FoxNews. In relation to Iraq he said: “And I don’t have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they’re a prehistoric group…What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them…”

And in relation to Afghanistan: “the U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble - the airport, the power plants, their water facilities, and the roads…This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard”.

We cannot let individual tragedies make us loose sight of what is a justified war of resistance against the American occupation forces and their Iraqi collaborators and puppets.

Endnotes:

1 Associated Press, “Car bombs and explosions kill 30 in Iraq”, 15 July 2005

2 Time magazine, “Inside the mind of an Iraqi suicide bomber”, 4 July 2005 issue, pp.20-5

3 See a list of NATO bombing “blunders” and “mistakes” in Yugoslavia here

4 Edward S. Herman, “Real journalism versus propaganda”, 3 February 2000

5 Howard Zinn, “The deadly semantics of NATO bombings”, 28 May 1999