More civilians die as the U.S. continues to deliver Democracy on the tip of a spear.

U.S. Marine airstrikes targeting insurgents sheltering in Iraqi residential neighborhoods are killing civilians as well as guerrillas along the Euphrates River in far western Iraq, according to Iraqi townspeople and officials and the U.S. military.

Just how many civilians have been killed is strongly disputed by the Marines and, some critics say, too little investigated. But townspeople, tribal leaders, medical workers and accounts from witnesses at the sites of clashes, at hospitals and at graveyards indicated that scores of noncombatants were killed last month in fighting, including airstrikes, in the opening stages of a 17-day U.S.-Iraqi offensive in Anbar province.

"These people died silently, complaining to God of a guilt they did not commit," Zahid Mohammed Rawi, a physician, said in the town of Husaybah. Rawi said that roughly one week into Operation Steel Curtain, which began on Nov. 5, medical workers had recorded 97 civilians killed. At least 38 insurgents were also killed in the offensive's early days, Rawi said.

Regardless of whether you support the decision to go to war or not, I find it mind numbing that anybody can support this. In an honorable war you battle soldiers. You do not kill their children!

The idea that we are going to win allies in these regions is laughable to me. Just ask yourself how cozy you would get with the people who desroyed your home and killed your family. The Bush administration has ensured that we will be hated for several generations to come. I have no doubt that there are many willing suicide bombers in these provinces just waiting to be recruited.

By the way if we were wrong about the WMD's, which was the supposed reason that we went into Iraq, then why are we still killing? The President himself admitted that the reasons we went into war turned out to be wrong. Doesn't that demand that we stop? If we were not justified in going to war then isn't every single death that resulted from that decision murder? And using that same line of logic, are we not still simply murdering these innocent people? Even the ones that are shooting back at us?

I am not a murderer. I do not want my country to engage in murder. The immorality of this is overwhelming to me. I imagine there are those who would say that my thinking is too simplistic and that I am just not being realistic. Okay then educate me. Because as I prepare to celebrate a time of joy and peace in my cozy home I can't stop thinking about the horrible devastation that my country is inflicting on a nation that did not cause me, my family, or my country an ounce of pain. But what we are doing there, that does cause me pain.