Rantburg links to a newspaper article in the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard about allegations that U. S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq, went on a rampage and killed two dozen civilians after one of their own was killed by a bomb. Horrible, if true, and I certainly hope that anyone found guilty of such a crime does not get off as lightly as Lt. Calley. The last paragraph struck me as odd:

“If the accounts as they have been alleged are true, the Haditha incident is likely the most serious war crime reported in Iraq since the beginning of the war,” said John Sifton, of Human Rights Watch. “Here we have two dozen civilians being killed – apparently intentionally. This isn’t a gray area. This is a massacre.”

What’s cretinous about Sifton’s statement? It’s missing three words. If true, this would indeed be “the most serious war crime” by our side “reported in Iraq since the beginning of the war”, but it wouldn’t even be in the top 20 war crimes committed in Iraq in that time period. The ‘insurgents’ routinely kill civilians in larger numbers, and in cold blood. Of course, that does not in any way justify massacres by our side, but it’s amazing that anyone could write such an obviously false statement. Apparently, to some people, massacres by Islamist fanatics, leftover Ba’athists, and their foreign allies don’t really count as massacres.