Blogoland

Hey everyone, great news! Killing those who are unarmed and have effectively surrendered is now super-duper OK!

INFORMATION WARFARE: Turning a battle into a war crime. It helps if the press is complicit.

See, slaughtering unarmed people is now a "battle." Also, peeing on corpses is good.

See also: "Those white flags are no match for our muskets!"

UPDATE: This story, from the NYT, gets at what I think is the ultimate truth of the Haditha story [and which, I guarantee, will not get an InstaLink]: Namely, that in Iraq, the front lines are nowhere and everywhere at the same time. That there are insurgents lurking and hiding in and among families, but also that there are extremely stressed forces who don't know where the fire is coming from. And also, it seems, there are some who simply snap and decide to execute a few people. A hideous situation all around:

Captain Dinsmore, a 21-year veteran testifying by telephone from Iraq, offered a relatively impassioned response. He said the Iraq war rarely provided clear lines between combatants and civilians. The marines in Haditha that day, under small-arms fire in a profoundly hostile Sunni Arab region, could either abide by the laws of war and risk being killed, or could take aggressive steps to protect themselves and their squad members, and risk committing a war crime.

“The reality is then and the reality is now, you let loose marines in a T.I.C. against a hostile situation, taking small-arms fire,” Captain Dinsmore said, referring to “troops in contact,” “they don’t have the training nor do they have the presence of mind to differentiate between civilians and insurgents. It stinks.”