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Why the Van Didn't Stop
03/31/2003

As terrible as the tragedy was, there seems to me a broader hope to be found in the fact that significant portions of the American public seem inclined to assume that there was more to the scene — in the soldiers' favor — than is immediately apparent:

U.S. troops killed seven Iraqi women and children at a checkpoint Monday when the Iraqis' van would not stop as ordered, a military official said.

Two other civilians were wounded in the incident at a U.S. Army checkpoint on a highway near Najaf in southern Iraq, the official said. The military is investigating, he said.

The dead and wounded were among 13 women and children in a van that approached the checkpoint but did not stop, the official said. Soldiers fired warning shots and then shots into the vehicle's engine, neither of which stopped it, he said.

Nobody ought to doubt that a monster (or his surviving representatives) who would cut off children's ears to extort some kind of statement from a parent would send a group of women and children to certain death in order to give even a smidgen of ammunition to the Westerners who are striving to stop his (their) defeat.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:21 PM EST