"Civilians are always any war's cruelest toll. But to call them heroes is crueler still. It assumes that they would have willingly accepted their own sacrifice in a cause they believe in (tell that to a dead five year old's mother), when chances are that, whoever was doing the killing, they couldn't care less about greater causes, let alone America's grab-bag of pseudo-causes since the war began in 2003. They're victims, pointless, wasted victims whose numbers, wherever they are, have long ago reached massacre proportions. The one valid cause to have ended Saddam's reign -- to end his massacres of Iraqis -- is no longer valid." - - - Pierre Tristam