I’m rather disappointed in the Wall Street Journal this afternoon. The publication reports that NATO troops opened fire on a civilian bus in Afghanistan, killing four civilians and wounding eighteen others. We even get this in the fourth paragraph:

Instead, the bus shooting prompted widespread anger in Kandahar with protesters setting tires aflame and blocking the main highway leading west out of the city. Provincial and national officials condemned the incident.

But we don’t get told why soldiers opened fire on the bus until the seventh paragraph.

A spokesman for the provincial governor, Zelmai Ayubi, said the bus was traveling west from Kandahar city, the capital of the province, when it came up behind a NATO convoy around dawn Monday.

When the bus—which was believed to be carrying between 50 and 60 people—failed to heed warnings to stop, the troops opened fire, he said.

The soldiers didn’t just randomly shoot at a civilian bus like it’s target practice. They acted in self-defense, attempting to stop a vehicle that refused to stop as it approached their convoy. Gee, why would soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan be concerned about fast-approaching vehicles refusing to slow down as they approach coalition assets?

And now the eighth and ninth paragraphs:

A NATO officer said it was too dark at the time of the shooting for the soldiers in the convoy to make out what was coming up behind them. “All they could tell was that it was a large vehicle,” the officer said, citing preliminary reports from the scene.

The officer said the convoy tried repeatedly to warn off the bus with flashlights and flares. Ordinarily, the convoy would have pulled over and allowed the bus to pass but there were steep embankments running on either side of the road, the officer said.

In the tenth paragraph we learn that NATO medics immediately went to help those aboard when the troops discovered they had opened fire on a civilian bus.