when is collateral damage

murder? Any form of taking another human being's life is killing and the 10 commandments said "thou shalt not kill". So why do we make fine distinctions between a family's killed by being blown up in Iraq as "collateral damage" and the people killed by the twin towers attack as "murder"? If it was an act of war, is any death resulting to civilians "murder" or "collateral damage"? I am just looking for a pattern of consistency to get away from the hyperbole. Any death is wrong. Agatha Christie wrote the novel "Ten little nigger boys" (since renamed for political correctness reasons) to make this very point. But it seems to me that if we are calling the deaths in New York and Bali, London, Madrid and other places "murders" then is not "murder" a civil offence which should be investigated by Interpol? But we have chosen to say that the deaths are an act of war and so are any of our victims "collateral damage"? You can't declare WAR and then call the participants "murderers". Either they are soldiers or they are murderers. If they are murderers then they have committed a crime and ought to be punished by criminal Interpol justice. That's just the point - a terrorist is in no-mans land legally but mixing up the terms for our dead and their dead confuses the matter. Our dead and their dead have families and people who love them.