TRAINED KILLERS

And it is not that Marines like those under suspicion at Haditha do not like fighting. They are trained to kill and, usually within the bounds of discipline, seem to relish combat.

"C'mon captain, Kilo's getting all my kills!" a Reuters reporter heard one lament to his commander in Karabila last year as another unit stormed house-to-house in what an officer described with relish as "old school, door-to-door fighting".

Marines take a perverse pride in a sense of themselves as the Army's poor relation in terms of budget, equipment and manpower. Many exude a bravado about taking greater risks than an Army with whom inter-service rivalry borders on hostility.

The military said more than 700 Marines have died in the war, which began in March 2003. About 21,000 Marines are in Iraq in a 132,000-strong U.S. force, and Marines generally serve seven-month stints in Iraq.

The martial spirit is instilled from the top down -- one colonel told men before battle in Karabila: "There's a lot of knuckleheads here who have to get dead. I'm going to help them."

Indeed for many Marines, who love their guns, what they hate most about the war in Iraq is not fighting -- and especially not being able to fight back when their friends are killed.

November's killings at Haditha, where militants had imposed Taliban-style Islamic rule last summer before Marines stormed the fearful city of 90,000, followed the death of a popular 20-year-old lance corporal from Texas in a roadside bomb blast.

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