[Girlene]

Well, where the shells were found is critical information for this case. I thought another intelligence officer, maybe Frank, indicated he found no shells inside the three homes. I also thought, the four guys killed in that last house were threatening, but did not get any shots off.

One other question, do you know what kind of weaponry the Iraqi Army uses? If it's AK-47's, how could shells found outside the homes fired by insurgents be differentiated from those fired by Iraqi Army? In the Vanity Fair article, one of the Iraqi Army guys indicated he shot up in the air because they were encouraged to engage the enemy. His firing wasn't very effective if you're just shooting up in the air, but the casings left in the area might easily get mixed up with insurgents'. Also, any idea if the quoted Iraqi soldier has been deposed since he also indicated there was insurgent fire coming from everywhere?

[RedRover]

Here's how I see it. The prosecutors ask Lt. Frank, "Did you recover any AK-47 shell casings from the houses?"

He says no, because he didn't.

But of course someone else may have. Still, the press reports, "NO SHELL CASINGS FOUND!" rather than the less exciting "NO SHELL CASINGS FOUND BY LT. FRANK!"

As to Iraqi soldiers, I can't imagine we're equipping them with "pray-and-spray" Russian automatic weapons. So I don't think shell case confusion is an issue.