I invite everyone who has an interest in unbiased journalism to hear this side of the story:

English-language communiques from the Iraqi Resistance are nothing new. However, if you make note of their tones of voice, they sound like a group of people unlike those that are being portrayed in our media.

Far from mercenaries, these people sound like people driven to the brink by an ever-growing military force that will not leave them alone. Their (increasingly more-beloved) ex-leader was already taken out of office, now they speak of chemical weapons being used in Fallujah -- this was also already reported on on uruknet.info -- and of deformities happening to their children.

While I can't say that I stand by and condone 2,500 Americans being killed -- I can't say that I'm so callous as to patently dismiss the statements of a father lamenting his childrens' disabilities, his wife's death, his own homelessness. While they are still faceless "insurgents" it's easy to dismiss these people. Once the people have names, families, lives, it's a different emotional story.

These people have paid the ultimate sacrifices for our gas mileage.

They didn't do 9/11. They didn't come against us. Yet their lives have been ruined en masse, and the number of Iraqi dead stands in the hundreds of thousands, 2,155 just last month in Baghdad alone. This only represents 85 percent of Iraqis killed that month.

What is our license, our justification for what we continue to do?