Some woman on CNN stating that "these troops have half a second

to decide whether to pull that trigger"..... if the kids are lying on the ground unarmed, it would seem to me that one would have all the time in the world to deliberate on ones next move.

This was not a firefight or a confrontation, it was a calculated act of revenge against an unarmed population. My understanding is that the executions took place over the course of hours, not seconds.

Iraq with them...... not having been there I can't say... but talking to some who know people who have been there and people I know personally it wouldn't surprise me if many innocents have died needlessly, some for revenge, some as collateral damage, some as martyrs, some as fuel to produce new terrahists/insurgents.

We are not talking about the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who were blown up by us accidently, the "collateral damage."

In Hadditha the Marines deliberately lined up old men and children against a wall and shot them through the head.

in order to free the collective conscience of the typical uninformed Amurkan citizen?? How sad, we have a schizophrenic media that won't seek proper therapy. Someone needs to Baker act them and get them on the road to redemption.

like in Haditha and Ishaqi and many other places.

by troops who've been overseas and in combat TOO MANY times in too short a time. A friend was killed and they just went berserk. Where were the officers and Senior NCOs????

the major reasons for Bushies Defeat as a World Leader...he cannot control his own troops...in fact, he cannot control shit...he only thinks he can....

along time ago and far far away...no rest for the weary,long days and nights far from home fighting an army of ghosts. those who were never there never know what becomes of a man or woman far away from home wondering if they will ever see their loved ones again. our brave men and woman are led into battle by cowards that ran at the sight and sound of war

....people to get on the ground AND THEN SEARCH THEM INDIVIDUALLY so what happens when one looks like their getting into a pocket for something?

Now before anyone unloads on me, I'm not saying this is what happened - I'm simply presenting a "what if" situation.

I am personally not convinced these atrocities are all the work of the US Military - I think there's plenty of "black Ops" work going on over there. Desert camouflage gear is not that hard to come up with - I can buy it right here in the city - so if I know where to get it I know anyone else would also.

Specfically there is no dispute about which of our units were involved, specifically it was "3rd Battalion, 1st Marines".
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060601-5.html
There is a lot of dispute about what happened over the course of several hours after 1 marine was killed by an IED, but there is currently no dispute that after this event was over 24 unarmed civilians were dead.

Here is an MSNBC compilation of the eyewitness accounts of what happened:
"
“The Americans came into the room where my father was praying and shot him. They went to my grandmother and killed her, too,” Iman says.

During the raid, Abdul Hamid's house caught fire. Witnesses say Marines then moved next door to the house of Younis Hamid. Nine people were inside, and eight were killed — five of them children.

Twelve-year-old Safa says she survived by hiding under the bed.

“They came in and shot all of us,” she says. “I pretended I was dead.”

Witnesses say Marines then moves to a third location — a taxi parked by the side of the road. In it, residents say, were four university students and a driver. A witness watching from a nearby rooftop says Marines took the five men out of the car and executed them."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13053200/

The execution of civilians took place over a period of three hours. Any suggestion that this was a 'split second decision' is nonsense. There is no suggestion that any of the victims of this massacre were armed or were in any way involved in the IED attack. There is no dispute about who the perptrators were. There are, so far, no eyewitnesses contradicting the widely published accounts of the survivors.