Will the real threat please stand up

"This is only the beginning," Bush said. "The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation."

"If our enemies succeed in acquiring such weapons, they will not hesitate to use them, which means they would pose a threat to America as great as the Soviet Union," he added. "Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down we will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory."

What exactly is he on about now?

Last July, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Samir al-Sumaidaie, accused the Marines of killing his 21-year-old cousin in cold blood during a search of his family's home in Haditha, a city of about 90,000 people along the Euphrates River 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.

That is not the only case pending: On Wednesday, the military announced an investigation into allegations that Marines killed a civilian April 26 near Fallujah. The statement gave no further details except that several service members had been sent back to the United States pending the results of the criminal investigation.

Together, the cases present the most serious challenge to U.S. handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

A videotape shot by an Iraqi journalism student, obtained by Time magazine and then by Arab television stations, showed the bodies of women and children, some in their nightclothes after the search operation by US Marines in Haditha last July.

Other evidence such as photographs taken by a Marine intelligence team have convinced investigators that a Marine unit killed as many as 24 unarmed Iraqis, some of them execution-style, in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed an American in November.

Who is the threat here?