evidence: With images of the contractors’ bodies being mutilated making the press and eerily echoing the killing of U.S. soldiers in Somalia a decade before, the Marines were ordered to seize the entire city, despite their protests that it would worsen the situation rather than solve it. It was one ambush in a war full of them. But to the policymakers back in Washington, now feeling the pressure of the television news cameras, some sort of action had to be taken.