There was a fascinating article in last Sunday’s last New York Times, “How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria.” You should read it: the piece raises important questions about how the U.S. military conducts itself in war and our processes for transparency and accountability when civilians are harmed. It also provides a detailed account of ISIS’s last gasp in the Battle of Baghuz and the chaos that preceded a deadly strike.

Here, however, I identify three major problems with the New York Times report. First, as I described in the Omaha World-Herald, the Times piece paints a false picture of U.S. special operations forces as secretive military assassins, restrained only by heroic lawyers and whistleblowers. Second, the reporting accepts the legal and policy conclusions of its “hero” whistleblowers—conclusions which crumble when subjected to scrutiny. Third, the lack of balance in the piece directs readers to a false moral equivalence among rules-based nations like the United States and those nations and groups which make little or no effort to comply with the law of armed conflict whatsoever.