Four Marines are to face lesser charges after a two-year inquiry into Iraqi killings.

Ten-year-old Iman Walid witnessed  the killing of seven members of her family in an attack by American marines last November.

The interview with Iman was originally shown by ITV News’s Iraqi video diarist Ali Hamdani.

After a two-year investigation into the killings of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, the United States Marine Corps has decided that none of the Marines involved in the incident will be charged with murder. Instead, two enlisted Marines and two Marine officers will face trial in coming months for the killings and for failing to investigate them.

A cold blooded massacre by U.S. Marines has now been spun into an analysis of how U.S. troops should fight against a population who are tired of their presence.

We now have enough details from survivors and military personnel to conclude that in the town of Haditha last November, members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment perpetrated a massacre. 

1) Marine Lance Corp Miguel Terrazas dies in bomb attack on convoy of four humvees. Troops then "go on rampage".
2) At roadblock, four students and taxi driver killed.
3) Eight people killed in one of three houses.
4) Seven killed in a second house.
5) Four brothers put in wardrobe and shot dead in a third house.

The killings may have been in retaliation for the death of a Marine lance corporal, but this was not the work of soldiers gone berserk. The targets (children from 3 to 14, an old man in a wheelchair, taxi passengers), the hours-long duration of killings, the number of Marines involved, the careful mop-up--all amount to wilful, targeted brutality designed to send a message to Iraqis.

As Representative John Murtha has pointed out, the patently false story floated afterward, blaming the killings on roadside bombs, and Marine payoffs to survivors imply a cover-up that may extend far up the chain of command.

What matters about Haditha? After all, Iraq is a place where civilians die every day.

Many of them die as a result of insurgent car bombs, or at the hands of Sunni or Shiite militias. Many thousands of others died in US air attacks early in the war (as civilians did recently in airstrikes in another US war zone of Afghanistan).

Even in this context there remains a distinctly sickening horror in close-up systematic killing of civilians that's at odds with the declared US mission in Iraq and is repugnant to all of our collective ideals.

A generation of future US military officers were taught the details of the My Lai massacre as a particular lesson: What makes war crimes is criminal leadership.

Military law experts said the manslaughter charges reflect the military's reluctance to pursue murder charges because they are hard to win in court -- especially as military juries tend to give combat troops the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever the responsibility of the unit commanders in Haditha, it is George W. Bush as Commander in Chief who has sent the clear message that human rights abuses and violations of international law are justified in the so called "War on Terror."

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