[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The difference is that there is usually good reason to do such searches. Their families know where they are. Many of them are returned to their families. In the previous administration the individuals would just disapear. You can find their bodies amonst the numerous mass graves uncovered in the deserts around Bagdad.

..and Haditha. You can call it deliberate revenge killing or you can call it a tragic case of collateral damage, but the end result is the same

But Ware's concerns in the past have gone beyond issues of evidence. He also expressed concern with the impact a harsh sentence might have on the morale of Marines. "Even more dangerous is the potential that a Marine may hesitate at the critical moment when facing the enemy," wrote Ware in the Sharratt report. After weighing all the evidence available, Ware ultimately concluded that Sharratt had acted according to his training: "Whether this was a brave act of combat against the enemy or tragedy of misperception born out of conducting combat with an enemy that hides among innocents, LCpl Sharratt's actions were in accord with the rules of engagement and use of force."

From here:

House #1 -- 7 killed, 2 injured (but survived), 2 escaped 1. Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, 76 -- grandfather, father and husband. Died with nine rounds in the chest and abdomen. 2. Khamisa Tuma Ali, 66 -- wife of Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali 3. Rashid Abdul Hamid, 30. 4. Walid Abdul Hamid Hassan, 35. 5. Jahid Abdul Hamid Hassan, middle-aged man. 6. Asma Salman Rasif, 32. 7. Abdullah Walid, 4. Injured: Iman, 8, and Abdul Rahman, 5. Escaped: Daughter-in-law, Hibbah, escaped with 2-month-old Asia House #2 -- 8 killed, 1 survivor: Shot at close range and attacked with grenades 8. Younis Salim Khafif, 43 -- husband of Aeda Yasin Ahmed, father. 9. Aeda Yasin Ahmed, 41 -- wife of Younis Salim Khafif, killed trying to shield her youngest daughter Aisha. 10. Muhammad Younis Salim, 8 -- son. 11. Noor Younis Salim, 14 -- daughter. 12. Sabaa Younis Salim, 10 -- daughter. 13. Zainab Younis Salim, 5 -- daughter. 14. Aisha Younis Salim, 3 -- daughter. 15. A 1-year-old girl staying with the family. Survived: Safa Younis Salim, 13. House #3 -- 4 brothers killed 16. Jamal Ahmed, 41. 17. Marwan Ahmed, 28. 18. Qahtan Ahmed, 24. 19. Chasib Ahmed, 27. Taxi -- 5 killed: Passengers were students at the Technical Institute in Saqlawiyah 20. Ahmed Khidher, taxi driver. 21. Akram Hamid Flayeh. 22. Khalid Ayada al-Zawi. 23. Wajdi Ayada al-Zawi. 24. Mohammed Battal Mahmoud.

I won't go into rules of engagement, but I will ask a few questions.

Did anyone in these houses vote to be liberated from Saddam?
Is there any indication that anyone in these houses was sheltering insurgents (no weapons found) other than that a bomb went off in proximity to the houses?
If a soldier shoots and kills a 1-year-old, does that make him or her a 'baby killer', or does there need to be proof of premeditated intent?
Is anyone going to serve any serious time for killing all of these people?
If you were a relative of one of these people, who would you blame? Who would you have a right to blame?
If the Iraq war is really about liberation and justice, why is the effect on morale of a guilty verdict even being brought up instead of purely focusing on actual guilt?

Even if the soldiers actions can be defended as justified under rules of engagement and the deaths brushed aside as 'collateral damage', the question remains as to whether Iraqis haven't simply traded one kind of horror for another. When little girls are killed in American cities in the crossfire between drug dealers, and in cases where the killer is caught, the defense inevitably boils down to the fact that the killer did not deliberately shoot the little girl and was engaged in self defense. This defense usually falls flat.

There will be no jail time for anyone who shot these people. The defense will be that they had the right to defend themselves and that they could not be expected to put the safety of civilians above their own lives. This is the true difference between police and soldiers, and the end result of a military rather than police solution to the 'war on terror'. Soldiers are trained mostly to kill, sometimes to pacify and occupy, and not to 'protect and serve'. Each civilian death at the hands of soldiers undoes thousands of hours of community service, negotiations with local leaders, etc.

It will probably be decided that there is no compelling evidence to convict, but this will just compound the error. The soldiers who shot those civilians played into the hands of the insurgent who planted the roadside bomb. It wasn't liberals, the press, lawmakers, or anyone else who failed to suppress the story in the US who can be blamed for this, because the Iraqis knew what happened. The only people in the dark were in the United States.

There will always be a justification for killing civilians. A car was traveling too fast or too close and might contain a car bomb. A man or woman did not stop or raise their hands fast enough, so they might be a suicide bomber. These can be reasonable explanations for people fighting an insurgency and who value their own lives above those of the people whose country they are occupying. Except that if the insurgents have gotten us to the point where we are shooting civilians, then the insurgents have found a winning strategy.

They say that one of the reasons we are in this war was because our president did not have personal experience with war. So maybe we should choose our next president more carefully. Maybe we should find and elect a 'baby killer', someone who did shoot an unarmed kid, or woman in a car, or who ran over a kid in the middle of the road because that's how insurgents stop convoys. Someone who wakes up every other night screaming and knows how very dirty this kind of war is, what it takes to win it, and how very much it is worth to avoid it. Someone who will plan beyond the carrier photo op and realize that occupation means more than catching flowers riding in parades.