Roadkill

According to the interior ministry of the independent, sovereign, elected Iraqi government, over 4,000 civilians were "killed in violence" last year. The report does not make clear whether, in their view, this kind of thing counts as violence.

The US 101st Airborne Division is in no doubt. Quite apart from its being a high-minded counterinsurgency democratisation manouevre, the operation was an employment of precision guided munitions on a structure. Violence is something that happens when houses are bombed and people are killed. In this case, some "individuals" were "assessed as posing a threat to Iraqi civilians and coalition forces". Three men were subsequently precision-munitionised, with the inevitable collateral damage that is always a price worth paying as long as the customer is foreign.

The threat which had been detected (by an unmanned drone - is Tony sneaking another visit?) consisted of the aforementioned three men, digging a hole. The pattern in which they were digging the hole suggested roadside bomb emplacement potential. The gallant US 101st Airborne Division, having employed precision guided munitions on the building into which the three retired, did not deign to say whether they had found a roadside bomb. Perhaps their minds were just too high.