Sarah Holewinski from CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) penned an editorial for the Washington Post. A good read....

The True Cost Of War

By Sarah Holewinski
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A15

A year ago tomorrow, in Baghdad, a young woman from California was killed by a suicide bomb. Marla Ruzicka was working to get aid to Iraqi civilians harmed by U.S. military operations when her car and that of her colleague Faiz Ali Salim was destroyed on the now-infamous airport road.

Marla's legacy lives on in the countless people continuing her work and in the families she tried so hard to assist. Her help to victims of war should also be enshrined in our policies if we as a country are to be, as Marla put it, "just a little bit better."

To America's credit, we've made some progress on the issue of civilian casualties. The Pentagon has a program of condolence payments -- a way for the military on the ground to directly compensate a family for the death of a loved one.

Read the rest here.