Well, overall I've found our soldiers to be amazingly discriminate when pulling the trigger. Yes, I've seen some instances where the soldier could have done things differently - they are far and few between, and continue to grow more scarce. Yes I've seen instances where civilians were caught in the middle - mostly due to insurgent actions. I've seen both U.S. and Iraq Army and Police officers make a bad shot, or a wrong call - almost always for the right reasons - they were shooting at a confirmed enemy. I've seen far more instances where insurgents deliberately killed civilians, and willingly took advantage of civilians to mask an ambush. I've seen over a dozen civilians killed in a single SVBIED aimed at a single U.S. HMMWV in which none of the soldiers were killed. It almost always involved children. I've seen countless U.S. and Iraqi soldiers treat and evac wounded civilians from the results of terrorist SVBIED into an IP station, mortar attacks, IEDs, etc. I've seen far, far more uplifting and compassionate acts by ISF and U.S. forces toward civilians that saved countless lives while craven terrorist made their exfil and went off to some hole to lick their wounds so they could kill civilians again.

Perhaps Mr. Hedges might get out a bit more. He honestly would not have to look far to find the type of examples I just spoke of. However, that might require weening himself from poetic diatribe to serve his pale vision of reality.