Cops vs. An Army of Occupation

This article, and scores like it, have triggered me to observe this:
If our troops in Iraq are an occupying army, like, say, German troops occupying Paris during WWII, and a handful of locals fires at them, then--as in Paris--the predicted response is a wholesale military one, with choppers and overwhelming fire in the direction of the attack, precisely like the response to a wartime attack. In other words, the predictable military response is unleashed, generalized force in the direction of the attack, regardless of who or what is in the way, regardless of the harm to property and innocents in the war zone.
But if, say, the situation in Iraq is supposed to be "peacetime" and there's an attack by a bunch of hoodlums--kinda like, say, a shooting in East Cleveland, on a cluster of cops on a street corner (of course, unlike our soldiers in Iraq, cops know better than to cluster)--the response we would expect from the cops is quite different, isn't it? Even though the same number of cops/soldiers are hurt in the attack, we expect the cops to respond as cops: To fire at targets, to chase and apprehend the criminals, and so forth. In other words, an attack on peacetime cops doesn't justify a military, no-holds-barred assault that mows down innocents and leads to mass arrests.
So--the plain fact is, our troops in Iraq are acting like Hitler's in Paris, not (even) like LAPD in Watts. No wonder they hate us.
And, I wonder, what about this: Are we legally still occupying Iraq, in the sense of international law? Occupying in the sense that the populace, like Parisians in 1943, are subject to military orders? Is that what's happening over there, in the name of democratization?
Jesus, what a mess.