Fresh evidence of 'executions' by rogue US marines in Iraq

Fresh evidence is surfacing - in the form of new photographs - that appears to back the claims that US marines executed 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times, the photographs show that people were shot in the head or in the back, contrary to army claims that they died as the result of a roadside bomb; an excuse that was later changed to say that they died from exchanges of gunfire between themselves and US troops after Iraqis had opened fire on US forces.

'There wasn't a gunfight, there were no pockmarked walls,' the paper reports a congressional aide as saying. And it quotes a US Defence Department official who had been briefed on the contents of the photos as saying 'the wounds indicated execution-style' shootings.

US military investigators are probing the events of 19 November 2005, and a picture is gradually emerging of a small group of troops who lost control in the wake of an unrelated attack on their vehicle, which left one of their comrades dead. Other soldiers then helped to cover up the atrocity.

Two investigations are being carried out into the incident which is expected to result in several US soldiers being charged with murder.

Eyewitnesses and human rights groups believe the marines swept through the town in a lust for revenge. The attack may have lasted for several hours. At the end of it, 24 Iraqi civilians had been killed. They included a 76-year-old amputee and a four-year-old boy. In one house an entire family, including seven children, were attacked with guns and grenades. Only a 13-year-old girl survived.

Such incidents happen under the pressure of war. The tragedy for the Iraqis, and for the young American marines, is that this war need never have happened. None of them should ever have been in this situation in the first place.

The marines who broke under pressure and carried out this hideous act will no doubt face jail. The men who sent them there - the Bush's, the Rumsfeld's and the Wolfowitz's - these same men who bent the facts to suit the policy of "regime change", will not.

Twas ever thus. The poor don't only have to fight rich men's wars, they have to carry the can when it, inevitably, screws up.

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