TBogg steals my thunder, but he neglected this quote from today's NYT piece:
Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who is a retired Marine colonel, said that the allegations indicated that "this was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians." He added, "This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity."
Hmmmm. Maybe the 101st Fighting Keyboarders should consider Rep. Kline for some kind of award:
James Taranto makes a great point about the comments of Rep. John KLINE regarding the investigation into whether U.S. troops committed war crimes in a November incident where 15 Iraqi civilians were killed in Haditha, Iraq. KLINE claims that an internal investigation will show "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
As Tananto notes, however, KLINE's description is self-contradictory because if the Marines "overreacted," then the killings were not premeditated. And if the killings were not premeditated, they were not in cold blood.
Moreover, if the killings were not in cold blood, then KLINE is slandering our troops by saying that they were. If the killings were in cold blood, then KLINE, in characterizing them as an overreaction to the pressure of the mission, is making an excuse for horrific crimes.
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