Sunday, July 30, 2006
"The terrible tactical logic of war meant that the same substantial buildings attracted the Japanese Army, who bayoneted civilians to take possession or simply turned them into strongpoints with the civilians inside. When the inevitable rain of 8-inch US howitzer shells came the stone walls crumbled like sand. Sixty people died in Qana. About 100,000 civilians died in the Battle of Manila, a drop in the ocean of what we remember as the Good War."