As noted in Chapter 1, among the disturbing revelations in a Pentagon report on the ethics of the troops in Iraq was the fact that only 38 percent of the Marines serving in country believe that noncombatants (Iraqi civilians) are to be treated with dignity and respect. Other reports indicate that U.S. Marines in Iraq participated in a significant number of gross violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice with respect to civilians, and some were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for rape and murder. For example, Corporal Marshall Magincalda admitted to the Associated Press on August 9, 2007, that he and members of his unit planned to shoot an Iraqi they believed to be an insurgent and make it look like they killed him while he was planting a roadside bomb. They did not get to kill the man they had targeted, so they went next door in order to kill another Iraqi, a retired policeman and father of eleven children. They dragged that man to a roadside ditch, tied him up, and killed him. Corporal Magincalda's squad members were charged with murder, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, larceny, and housebreaking. Magincalda was acquitted of murder but convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, larceny, and housebreaking. He was sentenced to the time he served in the brig while awaiting trial and reduced in rank to private. “I didn't want to have anything to do in the killing,” he said. “But at the same time, I was willing to support my guys because I wasn't going to let them go off into the night on their own.” A psychiatrist testified that Magincalda suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and nightmares. The leader of the group, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for unpremeditated murder.

Predictably, when atrocities committed by American troops during hostile occupations or combat operations are exposed in the media, commentators raise a certain set of legal and moral-responsibility issues. The legal questions, despite the typical facileness of the usual commentators, are often complex and may involve determinations of whether or not the perpetrators were acting under superior orders and what rules of engagement governed the action in which they were participating. By and large, the answers to those questions may or may not expand the net of legal culpability, although they seldom direct matters of legal responsibility altogether away from the actual perpetrator(s).