Marine Reserve Lt. Jonathan Morgenstein, who served in Anbar province from August 2004 to March 2005, said that the account offered by Wuterich’s attorney surprised him a bit.

“When I was in Iraq,” Morgenstein said, “the Anbar-wide ROEs [rules of engagement] did not say we had the authority to knock down any door, throw in a hand grenade and kill everyone.” Still, he said, if someone in a house in Haditha was shooting at them, the Marines’ response may have been within procedure. “If they felt they took fire from that house, then that may be authorized.”

A Marine who served near Haditha in November said it was not unusual for Marines to respond to attacks “running and gunning” and that it was standard practice to spray rooms with gunfire when threatened. “It may be a bad tactic, but it works,” he said. “It keeps you alive.”

This from the WaPo story laying out the Puckett-Wuterich innocence thesis:

The defense attorneys said the rules of engagement — which vary depending on the mission, level of danger and other factors — are likely to become a central element of their cases because those rules guide how troops can use deadly force on the battlefield. One Marine official said such rules usually require positive identification of a target before shooting but noted that the rules are often circumstantial.

“Once you go back over it, you have to determine if they applied the rules,” the Marine official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Marine Corps does not discuss rules of engagement. “Did they feel threatened? Did they perceive hostile intent or hostile action?”

It’s not entirely clear to me when this is permitted under the Rules of Engagement (ROEs).

Definitely not under the official written Rules.

This report from December 2003, by the Human Rights Watch, mentions that

“The U.S. military provided guidelines for its troops by distributing laminated rules of engagement cards to all its soldiers and Marines [...] The ROE card, reprinted in full as an appendix to this report, is consistent with international humanitarian law.”

However,

“During the war, especially in the battles of Baghdad and al-Nasiriyya, contradictions in, lack of consistency in, and/or misapplication of rules of engagement may have led to civilian casualties. In particular, verbal ROE apparently differed from the official written ROE, most notably with respect to the requirement for positive identification prior to engagement.”

It seems that the soldiers involved at Haditha are just trying to justify their acts by hiding behind these kinds of discrepancies.

I read a statement recently by an soldier who had experience in Anbar province, and even in that hotbed of insurgency, he said the ROEs during his tour of duty did not permit this.