Photographer confronted Marines with Haditha dead images

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07244148.htm

SAN FRANCISCO, June 7 (Reuters) - Just days after the suspected massacre of two dozen civilians in Haditha in an incident now under investigation, an American photographer confronted U.S. Marines with the images of the dead, including Iraqi children.

Freelance photographer Lucian Read, 31, had spent months capturing shots of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. But when Iraqis invited him to photograph their dead two days after the Haditha killings in November 2005, he felt compelled to show the images to the platoon.

"I made a point that day and over the course of the next several days to show all of those pictures to as many of the Marines as possible," Read, who arrived back in Haditha a day after the killings, said in an interview on Wednesday.

"When children are killed, I don't care what the situation is, that's bad, and I wanted those guys to see that so they would keep it in their mind next time something like that happened -- hey, we don't want to be killing any more kids."