It’s only a shoot-to-kill-in-order-to-protect policy

So on the bottom of a page well inside the Saturday edition of the NYT we find a story to the effect that American forces are involved in military operations in the Philippines. Are they actually in combat, as “numerous reports” say, or merely supplying intelligence and communications support, as the military claims? Who knows? Who can even keep track of how many countries the US military operates in? Didn’t we send troops into Yemen at some point? I’m just saying it would be nice to know precisely how many wars and civil wars we’re participating in.

Metropolitan police chief Sir Ian Blair sort of admits the shoot-to-kill policy and says, yeah, they’ll probably wind up shooting a few other innocent people. The “sort of” is because what he actually said was, “I am very aware that minority communities are talking about a shoot-to-kill policy. It’s only a shoot-to-kill-in-order-to-protect policy.” So that’s ok, then.

The word in that sentence that makes it high comedy: “only.”