Shanker, Thom, Eric Schmitt, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. “Military to report Marines killed Iraqi civilians.” The New York Times, May 25, 2006.

Summary: Military investigators have almost concluded their examination of the unprovoked killing of twenty-four Iraqis by a squad of United States Marines on November 19, 2005:

Evidence indicates that the civilians were killed during a sustained sweep by a small group of marines that lasted three to five hours and included shootings of five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint, and killings inside at least two homes that included women and children, officials said.

The investigators found that the Marines did not encounter hostile fire in the course of the atrocity and that the killings were not in any sense done in the heat of battle, but were calculated murders.