smooth

Yeah, I don't know about the site--I've never used it before--the people running it may be full of shit. This story isn't from them, however, Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and this story is posted on their site. Regardless, HarmlessRabbit already posted independent confirmation (a list of sites that do not rely on quoting The Independent, yet are still reporting the same events) so it appears to be legit and, consequently, I believe the event occurred.

I do give the soldiers the benefit of the doubt. From a sociological perspective we argue that structures are going to dictate individual belief and interaction.

Since our government has resorted to demonizing and dehumanizing the opposition in order to garner widespread consent of the actions we are doing, soldiers are less able to differentiate between who the "bad" guys are. We do this through mass media, language, mythology, and ignorance.

By using words like "collateral damage" and "mopping up the objective/area" we are able to minimize the consequences of our actions--killing civilians and other humans (in the case of opponents). In our culture, we our tought from birth that the greatest taboo is murder (a form or definition of killing). We differentiate between various acts according to our beliefs--boot camp is one method to strip away one's previous definitions and replace it with those more conducive to the military's objective--to kill people under orders without or despite moral assessment by the individual.

As fear combined with time constriction (people must evaluate and respond to stimulus more quickly as the threat increases) continues to present a greater psychological and physiological impact on the soldiers, we can expect more incidents, where both their lives and those of the people they believe they are helping, to occur.