[Kim Petersen]

Let's see here: An innocent Iraqi family doesn't slow down fast enough for a road block and is fired upon by soldiers. The family is seriously wounded and have to receive hospital care in the country whose soldiers shot them. Injured and displaced from their homeland, having lost everything they owned, the family is looking to the courts of that country for redress. To this set of circumstances, the following remarks are made:

"If you're going to play, play hard" and "the sooner people can get their minds around the fact that might makes right, the easier things will be to understand" and "sure (the soldiers) may have had an itchy trigger finger, I know I would have" and "these lads are not sitting in a comfortable armchair contemplating the moral rights and wrongs of war" and my favorite "should have used an RPG, end of problems."

These were innocent people, scared for their lives, and living in a war zone - a horror most of us can barely fathom. No one has even alleged that they were anything other than frightened and confused. While one can understand that the young troops involved were also scared, it nevertheless astounds me the cavalier attitude some people have for the lives of the civilians we are supposed to be protecting. And, yes, it is the responsibility of these and all soldiers to contemplate the moral rights and wrongs of their actions. Combat does not create nor justify a moral vacuum for the soldiers who must prosecute it. It is precisely this, and our humanity, that distinguishes us from our enemies.

But let's be honest here, if these weren't Arab but rather Europeans, we wouldn't be reading this kind of disturbing banter on our website. But inasmuch as the victims here are Arabs, we read commentary that has all the humanity and intelligence of what you might find at a Klan rally.