While this incident is an unfortunate example of what the US calls "collateral damage", let's look at how this would happen someplace like Iraq, where people have to resist raids on their homes and theft of their resources with guns and powerful IED's.

An equivalent incident in Iraq would go like this: The pro-US puppet government in Iraq has some kind of large meeting in the Green Zone, and resistance fighters launch mortar rounds. One of the mortar shells has a defective propellant charge and clips the Green Zone wall, bouncing back before detonating and striking a civilian vehicle.

In Iraq, mortar shells EXPLODE, something bricks generally don't do. An incident like this in Iraq ususally leads to multiple civilian deaths. Yet few outside the US seriously suggest that the Iraqi Resistance should stop using mortars and rockets, choosing instead to just submit to occupation. For that matter, few suggest that Iraqi insurgents confine their weaponry to bricks and stones, which would do far less damage but could never win the war.

Now let's consider what happens in Iraq when the US tries to attack a meeting of Resistance leaders. In such missions the he US uses, not bricks, nor even mortar shells, but 2,000 pound bombs dropped from aircraft. Even if every bomb is somehow a direct hit(with no shorts or overs), people in neighboring houses get killed or permanently disabled as their homes collapse on top of them.

Yet, the wealthy GOP'ers who support the war(some of whom live in Georgetown) do not choose to discontinue their occupation of Iraq to put an end to incidents like this, nor to whole families being slaughtered by panicky Blackwater mercenaries.

Let's get real, folks! This was a stone(not even a brick by some reports), not a bomb, and thanks to that this woman is still with us, still able to stand and have her picture taken. Yes, if she is a worker in one of the stores or otherwise not one of the targetted yuppies we should take up a collection for her medical expenses, just like we do for our own people if they are arrested or injured. Some insurgent groups in Iraq have done this, we should too.

It is good that our medics offered assistance at the scene, and most combat medics of whatever forces would do the same.

That 12 year old boy who had his arms blown off and his face burned away at the start of the Iraq war(in another notorious incident of "collateral damage" was not so lucky. I'd rather take a brick in the face than a bomb hit(or a bullet like DeOnte Rawlings got)) any day.

Lastly, you may ask what in hell Iraq hasd to do with the IMF and World Bank? Well, the IMF still wants repayment for loans Saddam Hussein took out to build palaces for the rich(like himself). That's like asking residents of Anacostia to pay higher taxes to bail out bad mortgages on $1M homes in Georgetown!