Just When You Thought They Couldn't Get Worse

Very disturbing:

Iraqi insurgents appear to have adopted a new tactic since the start of a security crackdown in Baghdad, using children in a suicide attack on Sunday, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations on the Joint Staff, told reporters that a vehicle was waved through a U.S. military checkpoint because two children were visible in the back seat.

"Children in the back seat lowered suspicion, (so) we let it move through, they parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back," Barbero said. "The brutality and ruthless nature of this enemy hasn't changed."

Wonder whose children those were. You'd think this would be impossible for a parent, but then these fanatics probably don't see anything wrong with such a tactic.

Not that this hasn't occurred in similar situations elsewhere.

Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, in the al-Aqsa Intifada, Palestinian militant groups have used children as "messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians." Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) have all been implicated in involving children in this way. The issue was first brought to world attention after a widely televised incident in which a mentally handicapped Palestinian teenager, Hussam Abdo, was disarmed at an Israeli checkpoint.

Anyone want to try justifying this tactic? Or should we just come to the conclusion that stopping these types of terrorists is the right thing to do?