Shoot at anything that moves

Sorry for the cliche, but this sounds an awful lot like 'Nam:

U.S. Marines, moving through this still-contested city [Nassiriyah], opened fire at anything that moved Tuesday, leaving dozens of dead in their wake, at least some of them civilians.

Helicopter gunships circled overhead, unleashing Hellfire missiles into the squat mud-brick homes and firing their machine guns, raining spent cartridge cases into neighborhoods. Occasionally a tank blasted a hole in a house. Several bodies fell in alleys.

It was impossible to know which casualties were civilians and which were members of the Iraqi militias that have ambushed Marine convoys here for days as the Marines tried to cross the Euphrates River on a rapid march north to Al Kut, where they are expected to engage elements of Iraq's Republican Guard.

Signs of battle were everywhere. Burned out-shells of Russian-made tanks lay along the road. Other tanks facing a bridge clearly had been taken out by U.S. aircraft.

Official versions of the battles were unavailable. U.S. casualties appeared light, but it was likely that many civilians had been killed. U.S. troops searching houses found one woman with her husband, who was wounded, and her two sons, who were dead. All had been hit by stray bullets.

The shooting came as U.S. forces, targeted in recent days by Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, became increasingly aggressive in dealing with resistance. Marines were told a tracked amphibious vehicle had been ambushed by a group waving a white flag, and the plan for moving the 3rd Platoon of the 4th Amphibious Assault Battalion of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was aggressive, calling for so-called suppressive fire throughout the area to keep insurgents at bay.

It was early in the morning, and each of the platoon's dozen 27-ton Amtracs carried 18 infantrymen. The vehicles formed a herringbone pattern along the street, and the Marines opened fire as they advanced.

''I started feeling comfortable, like I knew what I was doing,'' said Cpl. David Barringer, 25, a reservist who, in civilian life, is a firefighter from Gulfport, Miss. ``Everything we were taught, it all comes back to you.''

A few hundred yards past the bridge, the Marines came upon the grisly scene of a failed ambush by the Iraqis. U.S. infantrymen reported that a group of 40 Iraqi soldiers on buses apparently had attacked an artillery unit. Approximately 20 Iraqis were killed when the Americans returned fire; the rest were captured. The buses were burned-out hulks.

''I saw a lot of bloodshed,'' said Sgt. Ken Woechan, 23, a reservist and assistant Wal-Mart manager from Ocean Springs. Miss...

Update: Related story, here.