The situation at Virginia Tech is horrendous. Appalling. Horrific. Mentally exhausting. So many students killed for no apparent reason.

The actual number of deaths and the lack of substantial reasoning for the shooting led me to think about a different situation: the "war on" Iraq.

Just a note: If you are not politically open or are easily offended by radical political thoughts, don't read further. I'm not trying to be harsh, rude, or irreverent, but these are my honest thoughts.

The current estimate for deaths is 32, 33 including the shooter. The current US Solider death toll in Iraq is over 3,300. Iraqi civilian death toll sits in the tens of thousands, with hundreds of thousands displaced.

Today there was a news story about a car bomb killing 37 people, 38 including the bomber, in Iraq.

Before US involvement (I refuse to call the situation a war, no true target enemey, no fixed objectives, just repairs to mend a debacle created through bad judgement) in the formerly sovereign nation of Iraq, there weren't these weekly bombings, IED explosions, there were 3,300 more servicemen and women alive, and millions of Iraqis weren't devestated by the actions of a war-mongering political machine.

Why don't the newscasters show a truly deep seated sorrow for the dead civilians in Iraq? How do they keep straight faces on days when scores of innocent people die? How can they not show emotion when reporting the death of a US soldier overseas?

Then here's the big question: How different is a college student from a soldier?

Everyone seems to feel their soul bleeding over the mindless death at VTech. Am I the only one who feels their soul tormented by the mindless deaths in Iraq? Where's the true motive for the deaths of tens possibly hundreds of thousands of people? What gave our government the right to execute such an order?

My heart goes out to all those affected by the VTech shooting. But even more so, my heart goes out to all the innocent Iraqi citizens who have had their lives ripped out from under them.