For the last 8 years, even the best newspapers in the United States have mostly "reported" a rehash of whatever official sources announced or leaked to them, but at least the New York Times still apparently understood what it was reporting.

And now the Times has published this bizarro fable from Helmand Province in Afghanistan...

In a five-day battle, the British killed 120 Taliban fighters and wounded 150. Only one British soldier was wounded.

But if 270 "Taliban fighters" had actually shot at British troops, you have to wonder how 269 of them missed everything they shot at, because...

"Taliban fighters" somehow conquered Afghanistan in 1996, and drove out exactly the same warlords whom the United States re-installed in 2001...

And if 270 "Taliban fighters" could only hit one British soldier, before British soldiers killed all 270 of those same "Taliban fighters"...

Then you would have to wonder how "Taliban fighters" ever conquered anything, much less a country like Afghanistan, which is notoriously hard to conquer.

So unless you believe that the "Taliban fighters" were shooting rubber bullets out of toy guns...

The only reasonable explanation is that there were no "Taliban fighters" shooting at anybody, and the British have committed yet another massacre in Afghanistan, and killed 270 civilians.