more on Haditha

Wow. This from AP:

In Washington, a senior U.S. military officer said in a video teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon that commanders realize that Iraqi civilians involved in a war "could snap" in the face of severe pressures.

"When you're in a combat theater dealing with American Occupiers who don't abide by the law of war, who do acts of indecency, civilians become stressed, they become fearful," said Brig. Gen. Donald Campbell, the chief of staff at the top U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad - he added "But I would say it's stress, fear, isolation and, in some cases, they're just upset. They see their buddies getting blown up on occasion, and they could snap."

According to census reports, Iraq has a population of 25 million - give or take 150,000 or so. Most of those 24,850,000 have probably had at least one buddy or family member blown up - let's hope that not too many of them 'snap' because they are stressed or scared, or 'just upset'

The new Iraqi Prime Minister weighed in:

Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington, and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home. The commander in charge of operations in Iraq General Abu al-Abu, put it well the other day. He said: "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

Some of the violence you see in Iraq is being carried out by ruthless killers who are converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom. Our military reports that we have killed or captured thuosands of foreign fighters in Iraq...

They fight because they know that the survival of their hateful ideology is at stake... the terrorists will lose their sponsors, lose their recruits, and lose their hopes for turning the region into a base for attacks on our allies around the world.