Malmédy - In December of

Malmédy - In December of 1944, Hitler launched his "last gasp" attack, the Battle of the Bulge. The attack was spearheaded by the SS - the Nazi Party's private army. The point of the spearhead was Kampfgruppe Peiper, a specially-trained brigade of SS stormtroopers led by SS Colonel Joachim Peiper, like many of his men a grizzled veteran of the Russian Front and its horridly brutal combat. The elite of Germany's armored elite, they were a ruthless bunch of soldiers. In "A Time of Trumpets", Charles MacDonald quoted one of Peiper's company commanders: "I am not giving you orders to shoot prisoners of war, but you are all well-trained SS soldiers."

On December 17, 1944, the second day of the Bulge offensive, Peiper's troops had broken through the American front lines, and were overrunning American rear-area units. Near the village of Malmédy, Belgium, they captured a mixed bag of US supply soldiers, truck drivers and others. Their mission - charge through the American rear area, destroying all in their path and raising havoc - didn't include caring for prisoners of war. They rounded the American troops up in an open field and machine-gunned them. At least 80 were confirmed killed, although many Americans managed to escape by running or playing dead as SS troopers wandered among the bodies shooting those showing signs of life.

Word got out, of course. Americans stopped surrendering. They slipped into the woods rather than give up to the SS, and continued the fight. And American units facing Peiper stiffened their resolve, slowing him down at every turn in the dense Ardennes woods, even with a roadblock of blazing fuel (the fuel Peiper had counted on to keep his diesel-starved unit moving), until Peiper's unit ran out of fuel at the high-water mark of the Bulge.

Today's atrocities, apparently commited by Hussein's version of SS, the Saddam Fedayeen, may have the same effect on US and UK resolve. I suspect you'll see a lot of "Remember Nasiriyeh" signs out on the front.

And I have to wonder - maybe that was the Iraqis' whole purpose. Their leadership - whatever there is of it - can't be liking the images that are getting out in the Western media - Iraqi children cadging food off advancing Marines, old men thanking Allah for our arrival...

What better than to make us suspicious of all Iraqis? It's a desperate act - and these are desperate men.

I think these atrocities - expected as they are in this sort of fluid situation - will backfire on the Iraqi military. The challenge (in my utterly unqualified opinion) is to keep it from backfiring even worse on the Iraqi people, with the political costs that'd accompany it.