When we bomb a civilian shelter in Baghdad and our military claims it was a military command and control center, we should be aware of the following parallel. Our military asserts that the Iraqi military hides its facilities in civilian structures. The same assertion was made in regard to similiar bombing practices used against North Vietnam, where churches, schools, hospitals, civilian housing, dikes, etc. were bombed as "legitimate" military targets.

For the uninformed, this is psycho-social targeting, where the objective is to terrorize and demoralize the civilian population of a country to the point where it no longer supports its leaders and military. Civilian facilities and populations were deliberate targets for barbaric cluster and napalm bombs, not accidental hits.

I can accept that our military made a "miscalculation" -- perhaps they thought Saddam himself was in the shelter and the number of civilians wasn't excessive for such a human target or that it wouldn't be as widely publicized as it was, i.e. the cameras wouldn't be there or be able to transmit reports out of Baghdad.

We hear so much about how Peter Arnett of the Cable News Network in Baghdad is being censored by the Iraqi governemt and any report from there is "propaganda." Every report from the correspondents covering our military are every bit as controlled, if not more, and yet our military spokesmen assert that the "free" press is placing the allied forces at a disadvantage.

Apparently they believe the lesson of Vietnam is to avoid having the bloodshed freely broadcast into American living rooms -- rather than avoiding ill-advised military intervention into socio-political problems, where we should not be involved in the first place.

This thinking is warped to the degree that the dead bodies must be kept out of public sight or Americans might lose the stomach necessary to fight this war.

How noble a people are we when the burned and mangled bodies of women and children become our objective and the returning dead must be hidden away so we aren't conscious of them? Talk about the hidden costs of war.