Our Expensive Government in Action

The Keystone Kops were at it again yesterday, when they shut down the Capitol and all 147 DC public schools because they mistook construction noise for gunfire. Only the geniuses at DHS understand the connection between "terror" at the RHOB and the threat to Lafayette School in Chevy Chase, but that is why we hire more of them every day and give them generous retirement plans that the rest of us can only envy.

Team America has also been at it again, showing us that the disgrace of Abu Ghraib was just a warm-up. In a very well-reported article today, the Wa Post described a massacre of innocent Iraqis by the Marines that can only rival My Lai in its wantonness and horror. The Marines were hit by an IED and lost one of there own:

Then one of the Marines took charge and began shouting, said Fahmi, who was watching from his roof. Fahmi said he saw the Marine direct other Marines into the house closest to the blast, about 50 yards away.

It was the home of 76-year-old Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali. Although he had used a wheelchair since diabetes forced a leg amputation years ago, Ali was always one of the first on his block to go out every morning, scattering scraps for his chickens and hosing the dust of the arid western town from his driveway, neighbors said.

In the house with Ali and his 66-year-old wife, Khamisa Tuma Ali, were three of the middle-aged male members of their family, at least one daughter-in-law and four children -- 4-year-old Abdullah, 8-year-old Iman, 5-year-old Abdul Rahman and 2-month-old Asia.

Marines entered shooting, witnesses recalled. Most of the shots -- in Ali's house and two others -- were fired at such close range that they went through the bodies of the family members and plowed into walls or the floor, physicians at Haditha's hospital said.

A daughter-in-law, identified as Hibbah, escaped with Asia, survivors and neighbors said. Iman and Abdul Rahman were shot but survived. Four-year-old Abdullah, Ali and the rest died.

Ali took nine rounds in the chest and abdomen, leaving his intestines spilling out of the exit wounds in his back, according to his death certificate.

The Marines then hit three other houses and a taxicab, killing in total 24 innocent people.

My last military TtP post received 8 very negative comments. I was called a nut and the reason that people don't take libertarians seriously and no one wanted the draft. I can't contort myself to make a libertarian argument to defend Abu Ghraib and Haditha. On the draft, if you want an army of hired hands then that is exactly what you will get, and we have gotten it. How is it anti-libertarian, or anti-American to point this out?