Tucked away in a Times story today, one about how U.S. military families themselves are losing faith in the war in Iraq, is this poignant, yet shocking item, from Penny Preszler, a mother of a soldier:

“There was no pride left in his voice, just this robotic sense of despair,” she said, describing a telephone conversation with her son, Skyler, 24, an infantryman on his second tour of duty in Iraq. “Mom, we killed women on the street today. We killed kids on bikes. We had no choice,” she recounted his saying.

The same week, she said, her son told her he thought he had seen the worst when he had to pick up the body parts of his dead buddy, but then he saw an Iraqi boy picking up what was left of his dead father.

That about says it all. In an interview on the Times site, Preszler says that the "seven- or eight-year-old boy was crying his eyes out" as he picked up the pieces of his father.

One more thing needs to be said: it seems to me that military investigators need to question Skyler Preszler about possible war crimes. They killed "women on the street"? "KIds on bikes"? And they "had no choice"?

UPDATE July 16: Penny Preszler contacted me to say that the quotes in the Times about her son killing women and "kids on bikes" were not true. She says that she told the Times reporter, Ian Urbina, in a long and rambling sentence, that her son had told her only that his unit had "shot at men, women, kids on bikes, to make them go away." She emphasized that he "did not say anything about killing anyone." She contacted Urbina to talk about a correction. According to Preszler, Urbina said: "Shot at, killed--it's the same thing." But he said he'd review the audio tape that the Times would correct the story if a correction is warranted, according to Preszler.