Something was missing from gov’t statement on Taliban’s Easter bombing in Lahore

While much of the world was peacefully celebrating Easter on Sunday, the Pakistani Taliban gave Christians in the city of Lahore a gift they will never forget. The terrorist group detonated a bomb in a park in that city that killed 70 innocent civilians and maimed 300 others. If that’s not sufficiently horrifying, then be advised that most of the victims were women and children.

News media that reported the story needed to go above and beyond the official statement issued by State Department spokesman John Kirby, which omitted one very important detail.

A photo reproduction of the press release was picked up in a tweet by Oliver Darcy, deputy managing editor of The Blaze. Before reading Darcy’s message at the end of the tweet, see if you can spot the omission in Kirby’s statement.

.@StateDept statement on Pakistan bombing makes no mention Easter-celebrating Christians were deliberately targeted pic.twitter.com/I4oTHdliJf

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) March 27, 2016

Amazingly, Kirby uses the adjective cowardly to describe the terrorist act. But what could be a more cowardly act than failing to identify the religion of the victims, presumably as a precaution against antagonizing the terrorists.

This outrage is hardly surprising coming from an administration that needed nearly a month to determine whether murderous attacks on religious minorities in the Arab world constituted genocide.