I must have missed the part in the S.O.P. about shooting women lying in bed protecting their babies using their own bodies as sheilds or shooting little boys cowering under a bed.

Mr. Hackett, what the hell happened to you?

Was the point about the cover up. Did the Marines try and cover up how the civilians died. I remember earlier accounts of the story that said the Marines claimed that the civilians were not shot at all but had died in the initial road side blast. Whatever happened to that part of the story and how the cover up was being investigated up the chain of command?

I agree with the previous two posts.

Just wondering, why is Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich's fathers picture included in this article?

The dead civilians surely knew about the roadside bomb. If they had told the marines that the bomb was there they would have been killed by the insurgents. Whatever story is true, they bore responsibility for the death of the marine. If there was any small arms fire from any nearby house, the marines would have been fools not to use overwhelming force to protect themselves. In was there is very seldom time to analyze the situation. If you are taking fire you have to kill everyone in sight. If you don't you will be killed. Silly-ass liberals just don't get it.

While I am unabashedly against this war and believe wholeheartedly that this administration manipulated the so called "facts" to justify an illegal invasion on a sovereign country, that does not change the fact that the US Armed Forces are in a state of war. Furthermore, I am not so naive as to believe that US Armed Forces do not go on murderous expeditions killing innocent civilians illegally. That said, this is war and anybody out there can bet their whatever-is-most-precious-to-them that if I was a soldier being fired upon after having a bomb destroy the vehicle I was riding in and I had to clear several buildings of people that were attempting to kill me and keep me from coming home to my wife and child, I damn well would use the shoot-before-you-look to kill whatever living thing existed in these houses. If my wife or loved one were a soldier, I would expect the same thing from them. Hackett is right on when he states that civilian deaths are a routine consequence of war. "If people don't like that, then people should work harder on bringing the war to an end...You are not going to have a war where innocent civilians don't get killed."

All of the facts are not out about Haditha, but when considering the defense being put forth all of us pacifists back here in the States should remember that this is WAR. This isn't your local PD enforcing US laws. In war standard operating procedure sometimes comes down to kill or be killed all out devestation, unfortunately, that means civilians will die. Is this Right? no. Moral? no. Ethical? no. And if it were my family that was inconveniently killed I would be doing all I could to make sure that my country ended its violent resistance, organized a valid government, and that US Troops were sent home asap. Violence begets violence. That is why we need to end this fight and make sure that the US does not ever use its military to instigate a pre-emptive war again.

For the reader who says the civilians are responsible for the bomb in front of their house...which civilians are you talking about? The people in the first house? The second house? The cab with four students in it driving down the street? Are the children in the houses responsible or just the adults? What about the old guy in the wheelchair who might have some trouble with curb inspection?

I've got the garbage cans out in front of my house right now. Any mad bomber who wanted to could have wandered by anytime during the night to throw in a bomb to blow up the garbagemen. This would of course be murder, but my legal liability and moral responsibility in such a matter are zero.

A guy in Baghdad just blew up ten people and injured twenty more with his shoes. You think someone riding a bicycle couldn't just drop a pressure-sensitive plastique dog turd somewhere where marine Hummers were known to roll by?

As for the small arms fire the marines are now claiming to have come under--small arms fire that somehow did not manage to hit anything, or even leave shell casings from anything we've heard--assuming the marines did not make it up or hallucinate it, how difficult would it be to toss a string of firecrackers into someone's backyard while you hightailed it the other direction? Assuming you had to be in line of sight to trigger the bomb, rather than just leaving one with a pressure trigger?

Certainly it's a war, and in war, civilians are killed. In war, soldiers have also been known to go bugfuck, and officers have been known to lie to cover their tails. I think all these things have happened, but that's why we have such things as "war crimes." Certainly if we didn't have war, we wouldn't have war crimes, but that's not a real argument.

For the reader who points out that civilians die in war, and if his family were inconveniently killed by an occupying force, he would do the best to end insurgency, organise a functioning government etc:

Wow! Christ, Gandhi etc have nothing on you. You must be a bonafide saint!

But you did mention that it was WAR. And that doesn't mean one side turns the other cheek, regardless of the number of slaps adminstered by the "benign" well-thinking occupiers.

Frankly if my loved ones were killed "in coldblood" or otherwise by an occupying army, I would make sure I took out as many of the occupiers (innocent or otherwise) as possible, whatever the cost to me. Blood lust isn't the sole privilege of a uniformed, well armed army. And revenge is an extremely powerful motivator - and nothing greater than revenge for the lost lives of one's loved ones.

I thought hundred plus years of anti-colonial fights brought THAT reality home to most old-world (European) colonial powers. If only the Americans could understand the same!

Oh this isn't just hypothetical - see Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan etc for precisely this form of revenge-cycle violence.

Cheers