baiting

From the great orange satan:

Since there are only fifty-two cards in a deck, the Pentagon came up with a new way to identify insurgents in Iraq:

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

Yes, in the continuing quest to spread democracy, here is a U.S. Army Captain explaining the new and improved version of innocent until proven guilty:

Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.

The president of the National Institute of Military Justice cautions that:

...such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.

Of course that "troubling possibility" is laid out in the opening sentence of the article. Not to mention the troubling possibility that the "bait" items might be planted on Iraqis after-the-fact to justify shooting them, which is how this program came to light:

The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

Update: OneCrankyDom has an excellent take on this story here.