As if We Didn't Have Enough Ugliness

The fighting in Iraq is ugly and, if the following is true, things just got uglier. It probably is true.

On the morning of May 9, a group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division arrived in a remote desert area of western Iraq for a dangerous mission: destroying an insurgent training camp.

What happened then is the subject of intense dispute.

Military prosecutors last month accused four soldiers in the unit of releasing three Iraqi men they captured that day only to kill them. The soldiers have been charged with premeditated murder, a capital offense.

Lawyers for the soldiers deny they released the detainees. They say the soldiers fired only after the Iraqis tried to break free and attack them.

But the lawyers are also making a more startling claim: that the soldiers were given explicit orders before the raid to "kill all military–age males" they encountered.

The lawyers say that two senior officers — a colonel and a captain — have acknowledged they gave that order, as have other men in the same company.

I say its probably true because I read a blog site run by a soldier in Baghdad. He's never mentioned something like this, but from the tone of many posts I get two impressions. One, commanders probably are giving such orders. And two, the troops don't need to be told this. Its something they would decide to do on their own.

Now if you go to the link, you'll see they were on an island and it reasonably could be assumed everyone on the island was an insurgent. Its also possible there would be women and children. Hence they would be ordered to "kill all military–age males". But maybe I'm being too generous. We'll have to see what comes out of this. First reports are often quite different from what is known after an investigation.

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