In 2008 local news media uncovered a macabre network that lured unemployed urban youths to the countryside with promises of jobs, only to kill them and pass them off as dead rebels.
Some British soldiers assumed that service in Northern Ireland made them smarter at fighting insurgencies than the galumphing Americans, who were also thought to be casualty-averse.
The only major objection came from Justice Antonin Scalia, who offered an even more robust defense of state privileges going back to the Alien and Sedition Acts.