by James Glaser
May 22, 2006

Knight Ridder Newspapers reports, "A Pentagon report on an incident in which U.S. Marines shot and killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians last November will show that those killings were deliberate and worse than initially reported."

"The Uncle of one survivor, a 13 year-old girl, told Knight Ridder that the girl had watched the Marines open fire on her family and that she held her 5-year-old brother in her arms as he died. The girl shook visibly as her uncle relayed her account, too traumatized to recount what happened herself."

When the story first came out, the Marines tried a cover up, but some Iraqi had a video camera, and Time Magazine did an investigation. Now the Pentagon has had to open its own investigation. So far one Marine battalion commander and two company commanders have been relieved of their commands.

At first the Marines said the civilians were killed by a road side bomb, then they claimed the civilians were caught in a cross fire, and now the reports describe, "Marines breaking down the door of a house and indiscriminately shooting the building's occupants."

United States Marines murdering women and children, why it almost sounds like a page out of a Vietnam war story.

So far 2454 Americans have been killed in Iraq, and another 17,648 have been wounded. The Pentagon and our media down plays the fact that we are in a real war in Iraq with almost a score of Soldiers and Marines getting killed or wounded every day . . . day in and day out.

Our troops are on edge, with many now doing their second or third tour of duty. Many have seen their friends killed or maimed, and they do not want that to happen to them. Yes, they are scared, and when you are scared you do any thing you think will keep you and your comrades alive.

Women and children are no longer women and children, they are the enemy. In fact everyone that isn't an American becomes the enemy, and if things get bad enough, everyone that isn't in your unit is the enemy.

We have pushed our troops to the breaking point, and the Marine unit that killed the 12 or 15 Iraqi civilians last November had met that breaking point and they broke. They killed out of fear, and probably revenge.

That has happened in every war there ever was. They say, "war is hell," and it is. The Marines who did the killing will pay for that day the rest of their lives. Right now they might be able to rationalize their actions, but when some time has passed, and they have to sit alone and think about what they did, their actions will start to eat at them.

It might be a couple of years it might be a dozen, or it might take decades, but some day they will freak out and realize that they are murderers, and that is a tough one.

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