Is this democracy or terrorism?

I’ve often stayed up at night wondering how did the strongest, most prosperous country, one supposedly dedicated to democracy and freedom justify invading, occupying and terrorizing a country that was not at war with us, or at the time of the 2003 war anyone else. While it’s really old news that no substantial cache of WMDS on the order of what were told have been found in Iraq and equally old news that thousands of civilians have been killed it still is no easier to read headlines like this

Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head

A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks’ website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.

But Philip Alston, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

Related articles

• Why are atrocities under repported? (politics.ie)
• WikiLeaks: Airstrike ordered to cover up U.S. shooting of Iraqi children (thestar.com)