I smell a rotten fish. No way would US Marines shoot children "at close range" in the head on purpose. No f*****g way. My guess: It's an AL Queda PR campaign and the MSM i sbuying hook, line and sinker.
they could well have been taking fire from these "apartments" (was it one or two or more?) - and decided they were simply going to kick the door in and start firing before determining who was in them. that may well be outside the rules of engagement, but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. same thing with the 5 men in the taxi cab, they may well have assumed that it was a car bomb that was part of an attack against them.
this may well be a "shoot first and ask questions later" type of thing. these guys panicked, they felt the military would not support the true story of their actions given the results, so they made up the story about the victims being killed by the IED.
it tells us alot about how Marines in the field must feel about the kind of support they fear getting (or not getting, in this case) - when mistakes are made under brutal combat conditions, that they would have to lie about that aspect of the incident.
its time to start turning over more combat ground activities like this to iraqi forces - there will be no one to question and court martial them if they make a mistake.
No way US Marines would falsify an after action report and claim that that 15 Iraqis killed by gunfire were killed by the same IED explosion that killed their comrade, but they did. Are you claiming that combat marines would not be able to distinquish between bullet wounds and bomb injuries, especially when those killed were in their homes and not on the street?