If You're Car-Bombed and Fired Upon, No Firing Back!

I just glanced at the local paper's front page and the top headline to a story from the Washington Post caught my eye.

Here is the Washington Post's version:

Marines Open Fire After Afghan Ambush

My local paper, the Socialist Spokesman-Review has the headline:

Afghan deaths cause outcry

Apparently, both papers fail to understand that OUR MARINES WERE AMBUSHED. Their focus is on the deaths of Afghanis after-the-fact.

Take the first paragraph of the article:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 5 -- At least eight Afghan civilians were killed Sunday in eastern Afghanistan when U.S. Marines traveling in a convoy were hit by a car bomb and responded by firing in a way that some witnesses called reckless.

Our Marines were HIT BY A CAR BOMB, but all the MSM cares about is the fact that they responded with gunfire (those who, one can only assume, weren't injured---the article doesn't tell us if we had any casualties).

According to Afghan and U.S. accounts, the Marine convoy was struck by a van packed with explosives as it traveled along a roadway connecting the eastern city of Jalalabad to the Pakistani border, in the district of Mohmand Dara. The portion of the road where the explosion occurred is flanked by shops and was crowded at the time of the blast.

Immediately afterward, the convoy was attacked by " small-arms fire from several directions," said Lt. Col. David Accetta, a U.S. military spokesman. "The coalition forces returned fire in self-defense. It's unclear whether the casualties were from the car bomb blast or from the small-arms fire."

So, the Marines were hit with an explosive-packed bomb (aka van) and then shot at from several directions. Were they only supposed to return fire in one direction? How would that be logical . . . or safe?

AND, the casualties could be from the bomb blast or the gunfire aimed AT our Marines.

The MSM takes every opportunity to cast our troops in a bad light. Why not report that Marines were assaulted with a car bomb, fired upon, and that a number of civilians were killed in the resulting firefight, though it is uncertain which side the injuring shots were fired from? That would be too much to ask.

I, for one, think that our Marines ought to be given the benefit of the doubt, especially in light of the fact that they had just been car-bombed and fired upon. What exactly were they supposed to do?

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