I suppose we should be used to it by now. The New York Times is, if nothing else, predictable when it comes to their "support" for the troops - that is to say, if they speak out against the war they are held up as shining examples of our boys in the military.

But the Times hasn't been able to find too many anti-war soldiers lately so they've now switched to a Plan B - what might be called "The Rambo Option:" promoting the idea that our returning troops are a bunch of mindless killers, made that way by both a military that teaches them how to kill mercilessly and the hell they go through in Iraq.

Milbloggers are incensed at a story that appeared in the Times on Sunday that tried to make the case that something is terribly wrong with our boys coming home from Iraq:

THE New York Times is trashing our troops again. With no new "atrocities" to report from Iraq for many a month, the limping Gray Lady turned to the home front.

Front and center, above the fold, on the front page of Sunday's Times, the week's feature story sought to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home. Heart-wringing tales of madness and murder not only made the front page, but filled two entire centerfold pages and spilled onto a fourth.

The Times did get one basic fact right: Returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began. Had the Times' "journalists" and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would've found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.