My Marines were doing the right thing

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) - An officer who saw the corpses of Iraqi women and children sprawled across a bed in a home said Wednesday in recorded testimony that he believed that "my Marines were doing the right thing" when they killed them.

Marine 1st Lt. Max Frank, whose deposition was recorded in March before his return to Iraq, was the first witness to be heard at a preliminary hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the commander of the Marine battalion involved in the deadly sweep of the village of Haditha.

The sweep led to the deaths of 24 people on Nov. 19, 2005, after a roadside bomb killed a lance corporal driving a Humvee. In the aftermath, Marines went house to house looking for insurgents.

"From my perspective at the time, my assumption was my Marines were doing the right thing," Frank said. "I rationalized it to myself as they were taking fire. The Marines could have come in, yelled at them to come out, and when they didn't come out they cleared the room with a fragmentation grenade."

This isn't a war crime. It's war. Marines were attacked. They fought back.

(Image stolen from ARS)