Kendall Waters-Bey, a 29-year-old staff sergeant in the Marines, was crew chief on a helicopter that crashed on the second day of the war in southern Iraq, killing all four Americans and eight British marines on board.

The father, carrying a picture of his son, appeared before televisions cameras at his family home in northeast Baltimore to express his bitterness.

"I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good. This is the only son I had, only son," said Waters-Bey.

"The US government owes me an explanation," he added in an outburst on the motives for the US invasion that shocked many Americans for the strength of the attack on President George W. Bush.

The dead man's sister, Michelle, said: "It's all for nothing, that war could have been prevented. Now, we're out of a brother. Bush is not out of a brother. We are."

Waters-Bey was expressing anger that many American Blacks feel about the war. While about 75 percent of white Americans support the war, according to a recent survey, 61 percent of blacks are against.

Prominent black figures ranging from Congress members to rappers and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) have spoken out against the war.

"Black Americans are routinely told that there's not enough money for housing, medicine, education and rebuilding the inner city, but ... considerable sums can be raised for war and rebuilding Iraq," said Ron Walters, a political science professor at the University of Maryland, told the Washington Post.

Many poor blacks joining the army as a means of getting a professional qualification or help getting through university so blacks make up a disproportionate amount of the 300,000 US forces in the Gulf.

While African-Americans make up 12.7 percent, according to latest government figures, but make up 22 percent of the 1.4 million strong military: 26 percent of the US Army and 18 percent of the US Navy.

But they are less likely to go for frontline jobs. About 32 percent of the navy's 'administrative specialists' are black.

David Segal, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, said that blacks prefered a job they could use in later life such as in mechanics, computers or in the administrative field.

"There aren't a lot of corporations looking to hire people who fire rifles for a living," commented Segal.

A qualification was what Shoshana Johnson, the first woman US prisoner in Iraq, was looking for. The 30-year-old single mother of a two-year-old daughter joined the army because she wante to become a chef.

Johnson was among a group from the the 507th Maintenance Company, based at Fort Bliss in Texas, that got lost and captured in southern Iraq three days into the war. Her family in Fort Lee, Virginia had never even imagined her going to war.

"This was not something we thought was going to happen to her at all," said Nikki Johnson, one of Shoshana's younger sisters and also a captain in the US Army.

SPACE.WIRE