For an exhausted, disenchanted army there is still no end in sight

As the shock of the allegations of the massacre at Haditha sinks in across America this weekend, one key question is being asked. If the stories of indiscriminate and cold-blooded killings of innocent civilians, from children to a man in a wheelchair, are proven to be true, how could the soldiers have behaved this way?

Nobody will be in the business of providing excuses for the soldiers if charges are filed against them. Yet, legitimate debate is bound to start on the conditions they were enduring in Iraq and how they contributed to a bloody rampage. And is there something about America's own culture - its attachment to guns - that played a part?

It started at dawn. A roadside bomb exploded as a marine convoy was passing on a Haditha street and, hardly for the first time, the soldiers of the third battalion of the first Marine regiment witnessed one of their own being ripped apart. The blast killed L/Cpl Miguel Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas.

The evidence now being investigated tells of the survivors indulging in a spasm of revenge, running down the street and from house to house killing those unlucky enough to face them. The youngest victim was two years old. The man in the wheelchair was with his three sons and their wives. All were killed.

Psychiatrists and military experts have long warned of the challenges faced by American soldiers in Iraq where the old rules of war have been turned upside down. The enemy strikes with bombs and sniper bullets without warning. Often as not, they melt straight back into the civilian population. Distinguishing between the innocent and the enemy becomes nearly impossible.

At Haditha, the site of a hydro-electric installation, conditions for the US soldiers are particularly grim. Many are living in quarters originally occupied by engineers for the dam in barely lit, squalid conditions that reporters have likened to The Lord of the Flies. Scrap wood is scavenged for fires, 800 steps separate lavatories from washing facilities and many soldiers have given up making the trip between them.

Moreover, many of those stationed at Haditha with the battalion are on their second tour of Iraq, if not their third. Many may be reluctant soldiers now, morale ground down by the knowledge that this is a war that is increasingly unpopular and apparently without end. Only 40 per cent of Americans at home now support it. The Pentagon is being criticised for overstretching its soldiers, sending already exhausted men and women back to Iraq. Moreover, there is growing evidence that many of those who have served in Iraq come home suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A report released last week that surveyed 3,000 soldiers who had been in Iraq found one in five were suffering from PTSD to some degree. But many of those may be sent back to fight again. Fewer than one in 300 US soldiers is given the chance to speak to a psychologist before being shipped out to Iraq.

"If true, there is no excuse," John Koopman, a reporter in Iraq for the San Francisco Chronicle said in his blog of the Haditha allegations. "That needs to be said. But the effects of being in combat - the pressure, the fear, the stress - can't be ignored. War is hell, yes, but not just because it's so ugly. It's also because what it does to the psyches of young soldiers who are trained to take human life."

Among websites protesting against the war, Military Families Speak Out posted an open letter to Laura Bush on Mothers' Day, asking her to imagine that her daughters, Jenna and Barbara, were fighting in Iraq. "Now you're looking into Jenna's and Barbara's eyes, then their face, now their upper body, and now as a whole. But they are dressed in desert camis. The background still white and blank, but not for long now. Now there's bloody, wounded, mostly dead bodies of women, children and innocent civilians. The troops are told to search through the bodies, there's an AK-47 so it's all okay, no one will never know! But them. Meanwhile, their mind, body and physical ableness[sic] is just detearalizing[sic] right in front of them."

What the soldiers say

* Too many things have entered my mind recently. I don't know if it's because I've been in so many firefights, but I don't even know what I'm thinking any more. - wolfmoon98.livejournal.com BAGHDAD November 2004

* Growing up I had always heard that the smell of burning human flesh is the worst smell there is. I have since found that to not be true. There is worse. - www.abountifullife.blogspot.com BAGHDAD May 2006

* I find myself scanning farmhouses for snipers and bridges and sides of roads for explosive devices. I am sometimes angered at fellow citizens. I believe I now have understanding as to why some soldiers commit suicide. - www.abountifullife.blogspot.com

ON RETURNING TO THE USA May 2006

* One of my roommates woke up from a dream in which he couldn't stop looking at the clouds. I think we've been here too long. - fsio.blogspot.com BAGHDAD 2004

* One of the youngest recruits is sitting across from me. His face shows the teenager he is. He laughs and jokes and talks loudly about his girl back home. I wonder what will become of him. Will he go home to his family and his old friends and not know how to act around them? Or worst of all, will his tour end tragically? - greenagain.typepad.com/green_ again May 2006

* I sat outside under the Iraqi night sky, the earpieces of an iPod I borrowed from a young Marine wedged into my ears. I found 'Only the Good Die Young' by Billy Joel. You don't say. How old had most of the Marines I'd sent home thus far been? Twenty, maybe. Old to enough to get killed in this godforsaken land, but not old enough to buy themselves a beer. - greenagain.typepad.com/green_ again May 2006