Thinking Meat

By way of an anonymous LGF poster comes this hilarious diatribe by none other than that mount-foaming punching bag of the blogosphere, Robert Fisk. The whole piece is hysterical, in both senses of the word: Fisk is hysterical over the numerous "human rights violations" by U.S. troops who have the indecency to shoot at Iraqis who just happen to "miss" their roadblocks, and the entire article is hysterical in that it's just funny to watch someone fall apart like that. One gets the impression that he's been getting his money's worth for his 25 loo rolls.

I'm not going to go through this thing point by point -- fisking Fisk is just too easy, especially when he is completely off his meds (maybe we should call it fiskbarreling). I recommend reading the whole thing, if only to understand what kind of babble gets you the British International Journalist of the Year award (seven times!). But let's just look at one paragraph for illustration:

Then there was the case of the Bengal tiger. A group of US troops entered the Baghdad zoo one evening for a party of sandwiches and beer. During the party, one of the soldiers decided to pet the tiger who - being a Bengal tiger - sank his teeth into the soldier. The Americans then shot the tiger dead. The Americans promised an "inquiry" - of which nothing has been heard since.

Let me be the first one to say that I pity the poor animal, and that a man who tries to pet a Bengal freaking tiger is just asking for a Darwin award. But really, aside from this stupid mistake, what else is there to inquire about? What's there to condemn? The tiger grabbed this soldier with his teeth, and if the others didn't take immediate action, the soldier could have lost an arm, or worse. So they did what any armed man would do in this situation: kill the tiger. What would Fisk have them do -- send in Hans Blix?