by TChris

After launching an attack with "precision weapons" that killed 20 Iraqis, including women and children, the Bush administration should start to wonder whether the first directive issued by a sovereign Iraq will be: quit killing us.

In a bloody surprise attack, the U.S. military launched precision weapons into a poor residential neighborhood of Fallujah on Saturday to destroy what officers described as a safe house used by fighters loyal to Abu Musab Zarqawi and perhaps, at times, by the fugitive terrorist leader himself. ... Images from the site of the blast showed two collapsed houses, with people in white robes picking through the rubble looking for buried victims and lost property.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt admits that they didn't know whether Zarqawi was in the house, but justifies the attack because intelligence indicated that several of his operatives were there. The second house apparently got in the way of the precision weapons, but families of the innocent dead will be comforted by Kimmitt's assurance that the attack's "collateral damage estimate was within permissible limits."

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