Former US Army Specialist Ethan McCord has revealed that orders for "360 rotational fire" against civilians were issued in Iraq at battalion level as a new standard operating procedure in response to improvised explosive device (IED) attacks. If true, the claim amounts to evidence for mass execution of civilians: an egregious war crime, an article appeared in Global Policy website said.

Such mass execution of civilians has been prosecuted in the past under international law in the cases of Germany 1944, Nanking 1937, Hankow 1938 and the German invasion of Poland 1939.

This claim suggests a war crime which far surpasses errant bombs or overzealous individual soldiers in the heat of battle. This is the mass execution of civilians.

If McCord's allegations of an order for a standard operating procedure of "360 rotational fire" against civilians are true, this far surpasses battlefield negligence, accident, or even over-zealousness in the heat of battle. As a battalion consists of anywhere from four to six companies, that order would have been handed down to dozens of platoons and up to 1,000 men.

The killings which McCord said he witnessed would have been egregious, systematic, and calculated. The order also would undo all that many well-meaning American soldiers have been trying to accomplish in Iraq.

Full text of the article

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168-general/49230-soldiers-shocking-allegation-troops-ordered-to-engage-in-360-rotational-fire-against-civilians.html