It is unclear whether American courts will heed the ruling, and federal officials reacted cautiously, saying they needed time to study the list of decisions. "It's a very complex ruling," said Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman. "We'll decide, based on studying it, how we can go about implementing it."

Although the laws of an international treaty should prevail over national law, the Bush administration has often criticized the application of international law. Even if it bows to the ruling, federal officials may not be able to compel states to heed the court. Gov. Rick Perry, who succeeded President Bush in Texas, has said that "the International Court of Justice does not have jurisdiction in Texas."

Those awful pictures from Fallujah are a necessary part of Americans' education and must be shown to them just as frequently as the deliberate deceptions the media so gullibly passed along when the president was misleading us into war. As horrific and inhuman as these actions may be, Bush asked for this. He invaded another country in near complete ignorance of its history and traditions, in defiance of world opinion, and on the basis of dishonest and trumped-up arguments. What's more, he and Cheney ensured the failure of the post-war plans by refusing even to consult with experts who knew something about the region, even those in our own government. The result has been an unending series of easily predictable catastrophes that are worsening by the day. Knowing the ways of the all-powerful Karl Rove, I predict he will instruct Bush to cut and run before Election Day. The question is, will Cheney second the motion? Will the media allow them to get away with it?

Pentagon officials view Wednesday's horror in Fallujah as the Iraq war's Mogadishu incident: a disaster that may be a turning point for American policy. We will not flee, as we did in Somalia, but Fallujah should teach even the administration's most die-hard optimists that the mission is deeper and muddier than they'd imagined, that the country they have conquered is far uglier and far less pliant than they hoped, and that a new course of policy is necessary if we want to sustain the occupation.

Many are wondering how President Bush will retaliate for the brutal slayings of the four American contractors who were shot, beaten, dismembered, dragged down the street, and strung up on bridge poles. The universal feeling is that some response is necessary to let the insurgents know they can't get away with this. The question is what kind of response?

So, what do we do? Bomb the place till the rubble bounces? The U.S. Air Force briefly tried this approach last November with Operation Iron Hammer, in which we bombed buildings that the insurgents had been using, to no effect. The Israelis have been raining missiles and bombs on their own local terrorists for years, also to no effect. The danger of massive bombardment is that it kills the wrong people, angers their friends and relatives, and sires new insurgents as a result.

Do we cordon off Fallujah? To what end? To keep terrorists from entering? That assumes that the insurgents come from elsewhere, when most of them seem to be natives. Fallujah has long been the hot point of the Sunni Triangle, a stronghold of pro-Saddam sentiment. At least since last April, when U.S. soldiers killed 15 Fallujah residents in a demonstration, the city has been bitterly, hatefully anti-American. Besides, we don't have enough troops to close off the borders.

Do we send in more troops to "pacify" the Sunni Triangle? From where? As several Army generals warned before this war started (prompting ridicule and, in one case, the dismissal of the truth-telling commander), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's battle plan did not provide enough troops. As it turned out, there were enough troops to defeat the Iraqi army and occupy Baghdad--but not enough to accomplish the war's strategic goals. One year later, American forces are stretched thin throughout Iraq, throughout the world for that matter.