John Roughan: Blockbuster of horrific proportions

One day when America has got out of Iraq and is telling itself it has learned another lesson, Hollywood will make a blockbuster called Haditha. Or maybe just The Dam.

The screenplay won't dwell on the incident in the news now. It won't need to. If the US Navy's criminal investigation confirms the work of Time magazine, the world will witness a trial of several marines, America's military elite, accused of a massacre of up to 24 Iraqis after a marine was killed by a roadside bomb.

By the time it is over we would have read the story countless times. The unit was travelling in four Humvees through the town of Haditha in western Iraq when the bomb went off. Enraged by the loss of their companion, some of the soldiers shot four men in the street, a further five in a nearby taxi, then forced their way into the homes of two families and murdered 15 cowering people, some of them women and children.

We will remember things we don't know yet, such as the punishment, if any, and our intense arguments, whatever the verdict, about whether soldiers in wars like this are really to blame, or whether those who send them where they are not welcome should be in the dock too.

The movie might dwell on life at the Haditha Dam, an old hydro station on the Euphrates. It has been garrisoned by US forces since the invasion and it was there that the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Division was quartered.

Oliver Poole of the Daily Telegraph visited the dam in January when the massacre in the nearby town was just a rumour. His account appeared in the Herald last Friday. It read like a synopsis for Apocalypse Now - the Sequel, except this time it's a documentary.

He couldn't be sure the troops involved in the incident were among those living at the dam or at smaller bases in the town, but the connection seems valid.

Poole found the battalion sprawling over a dozen floors of the power station where the lighting was poor, the lifts not working and the grinding of the machinery made talking difficult.

The washing facilities were at the top and the main toilets at the bottom. With about 800 steps between them, many of the soldiers had moved into camps they had built.

He described it as "a feral place", where the men were unwashed and their huts carried signs warning outsiders to stay out. "A day prior to my arrival a soldier had shot himself in the head. No one would discuss why."

Entering one hut, he found a marine "pulling apart planks of wood with his dirt-encrusted hands to feed a fire. A skull and crossbones had been etched on the entrance to the shack."

The area stank of rotten eggs from the turbine grease, and the daily routine was punctured by the emergency alarm on the antiquated machinery.

"Each time there was another power cut, the turbines stopped working, the water against the dam would start to build up, and all knew that if the local engineers could not get the generators started in time, it would collapse."

A solitary American engineer was supposed to keep it working. "His job," wrote Poole, "was not helped by the Marines viewing the Iraqi workers as potential saboteurs. The troops he was quartered with terrified him ... "

What telling cinema this could make, the sweating madness of the camp, the dangerous town and the hostile desert, and through it all, the ominous, quiet, timeless water they must contain, the river of Babylon that has seen civilisations fail.

The massacre would be still a rumour maybe, a secret the soldiers are trying to keep from a world that will not understand the real depravity to which men can descend when placed in a deadly predicament that makes no sense.

Iraq no longer makes much sense to two-thirds of polled Americans. Like those accused of the Haditha massacre most of their troops are on the second or third tour of duty. They know the sentiment back home.

Each time the soldiers go home they would have to tell their proud folks of the hostility they face from all sides in Iraq.

They would explain they are just one more enemy in a multi-sided war. And now they will have to remind those at home that, heaven knows, Americans don't do the worst of it.

Just this week, while Haditha was in the headlines, an armed Iraqi group stopped a convoy of minibuses taking students to sit an exam northeast of Baghdad. The gunmen checked the identity papers of all passengers then hauled the 21 Shi-ites and Kurds from their seats and shot them execution style. Whatever happened at Haditha it was not done in cold blood.

The student murders were a one-day item in the world press. Sectarian killings have become a daily occurrence in Iraq this year.

Civil war was always predicable once the secular despotism of Saddam Hussein was removed. Those opposed to the US-British action take a grim vindication from events, those who supported the action say Iraqis are still better off to be rid of Saddam. The question that matters now is, what is to be gained by staying there?

Would things be any worse if the Americans packed their bags?

But they are digging in, building a fortified town for themselves in Baghdad - a six-block embassy compound with apartments, a beauty salon, gymnasium, swimming pool and school, all reinforced against mortar shells and surrounded by a sentried wall 4.5m thick.

It sounds so different from the hard reality of the Haditha Dam, where desperate people are trying to hold back the great river of history that will sweep them away if their power fails.