This is why a confused young mother who makes a traffic error in Washington, D.C. faces summary execution – and the killers will be lauded for their supposed “heroism.”

 

During the U.S. occupation of Iraq, soldiers  manning traffic checkpoints in Baghdad operated under rules of engagement permitting them to shoot any vehicle whose driver didn’t immediately comply with orders. The predictable result was that scores or hundreds of innocent people – including women, children, Iraqi police officers, and at least one intelligence officer from an allied country – were gunned down by over-anxious soldiers at traffic checkpoints.

 

As with so many other facets of the world-historic crime called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” theroutine slaughter of innocent Iraqis at traffic checkpoints was documented in war logs made public by the heroic whistleblower then known as Private Bradley Manning.