WaPo Shocker: Insurgents are Hard to Find

The reporting on Iraq really does boggle the mind sometimes. Today’s WaPo runs, as its lead story, the amazing fact that the “insurgents” in Iraq are chasing “elusive” targets.

Gee. Ya think?

I mean, do you reckon that folks who dress up like civilians, hide out among the civilians, use civlilians as human shields, use civilian buildings as bases of operation, and act like civilians (except when they’re sniping at our troops or covertly planting Iranian bombs to kill our troops) might be the teensiest bit hard to suss out?

I suppose that’s why there’s that whole set of Geneva Conventions to make that sort of thing out of bounds. That’s why we’ve always distinguished between one who is fighting according to those international laws and those who are not. In the past, we’ve never actually required ourselves to treat the yellow-bellies who put civilian populations at great risk by attacking them and using them as cover as if they were legitimate combatants. We have either detained them until we were done with the fighting or we shot them dead right then and there.

Then again, we’ve also never had a segment of our population so vociferous about refusing to recognize the difference between soldiers in a real army and the guys who run and hide behind women and children. I suppose that’s why the WaPo thinks that it’s news that searching out the latter is difficult.

Of course it’s difficult. Of course it puts out the local population. Of course it puts innocent civilians at great risk. That’s why it’s off-limits.

I’m kind of at a loss to figure out why this story has such a high placement in the paper today. It reads as just another “The war stinks and it’s really hard and we’re losing it” sort of thing. There may be more to it that I’m not seeing, though.

No related posts.

Category: Fighting the Islamists, Oh, THAT liberal media.