any them, so they are being released.

It's another uncomfortable moment for these Iraqi men as they wait for the Marines to return their ID cards and dismiss them. They're free to go, but they've been shamed in their own neighborhood, their powerlessness displayed publicly.

The Marines enter Iraqi homes without warrants to search for anything they consider threatening or suspicious...

What at first seems a threat often isn't...

This man had a single weapon in his home. He was allowed to keep it under a regulation that permits each household to have one rifle for self-defense.

At another house, Marines and Iraqi soldiers find neatly wrapped bags of gunpowder. They tie the owner's hands and question him through a translator.

His story? He uses the gunpowder to fish, a dangerous but not uncommonlife.

PALMER: The Marines say one man had live explosives strapped to his chest.

They killed three of the men in a short firefight but several others ran, possibly into a canal choked with reeds. So the Marines did something I found startling: it's a tactic called "recon by fire."

They aim their weapons into the canal and start shooting.

The logic behind recon by fire: it's better to fire a bullet blindly than send a Marine into harm's way.

But sometimes, Marine bullets hit innocent Iraqis. Last year, I filed requests for Marine Corps reports on these kinds of incidents like these that occurred during the 2004-2005 deployment to Iraq.

In one, Marines attached to the battalion's parent unit shot and killed a six-year-old boy who they mistook for an enemy.

In another, a