The Secretary of the Navy has done the right thing in booting three Marines and a Navy medical corpsman convicted for their roles in the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi civilian in 2006.

Secretary Ray Mabus on Tuesday ordered the administrative separation within 10 days of "Pendleton 8" defendants Marine Corps Lance Cpls. Tyler Jackson, Jerry Shumate, John Jodka III and Corpsman Melson Bacos.

He has also ordered the Marine Corps to prove why the unit's boss, 1st Lt. Nathan Phan, shouldn't also be separated.

Phan was not charged in the killing, but was accused of assaulting detainees in the same village.

It is not a slap in the face to the system of military justice.

While some say the secretary has stepped into a circle in which military justice alone should operate, we do not agree.

The military judicial system did its part by finding the men guilty and punishing them for the kidnapping of a retired Iraqi policeman who had no record of any ties to the insurgency.

The man was snatched from his bed, marched to a spot along a road that the squad had staged to make it appear he was planting a roadside bomb, and shot.

The secretary's decision is not really about punishment; it is a statement about the kind of men and women we wish to have serve in our military.

These men are not wanted.

They have violated the rules of war and conduct, and they no longer have a place in our honorable and revered Marine Corps and Navy.

In some respects, this is no different from a criminal court finding a civilian guilty of some grievous offense, and an employer afterward saying to the miscreant, "You're fired."