Everyone is familiar with the incident on Friday when a rogue Minnesota Lutheran tried to open fire on the passengers of a French train (he kept muttering something about 95 Theses).* Four men, three Americans (two of them military) and a Brit, decided that rather than be victims they would attack. While the French train crew valiantly looked to its own safety:

The actor told Paris Match: ‘We heard screaming passengers in English, ‘He shoots! He shoots! He has a Kalashnikov!”

The actor, who was travelling with his two children and his girlfriend, said: ‘Suddenly, members of the crew ran into the hallway and their faces were pale.’

He said the staff hurried towards their own car on the train and opened it ‘with a special key’ before they locked themselves inside.

Mr Anglade claims he and other passengers banged on the door and shouted at staff to open up, but their cries for help were ignored.

He said: ‘Nobody replied, there was radio silence. It was terrible and unbearable, it was inhumane.

So, today, as these men were honored by the French government, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, gives the credit to anonymous “European train passengers,” a very nebulous description. The anonymity stretches beyond the headlines. It takes five paragraphs to mention the nationality of the men and seven to mention their names. As John Hinderaker points out at PowerLine this is the way liberals view the world:

What a classic! It begins with a bow to “authorities,” unspecified but nevertheless deserving of reverence if you are a liberal. Next: “European train passengers” get the credit. If you didn’t know better, you would understand that the heroes were Europeans. And the Strib wouldn’t want you to know that they were not just Americans, but American servicemen.

The “averted” an “attack” is true, but it doesn’t convey the reality of a couple of unarmed men not only putting their bodies in front of a Kalashnikov rifle, but disarming, capturing and beating into unconsciousness a “heavily armed man,” probably saving dozens of lives.

What the heavily armed man was doing on a French train remains a mystery, as far as the Strib’s headline writers are concerned. No mention of the fact that he is a Muslim whose name was known to French anti-terror police, reportedly because of his known or suspected travel to Syria. No hint that this was an attempted terrorist attack, which may or may not have been directed or coordinated by ISIS and its European agents. He was just another of those “heavily armed men” who crop up from time to time in the news.

*The explanation offered by the accused terrorist’s lawyer is no more improbable:

The lawyer for the man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on a French train claims that her client, who was tackled to the ground last Friday by three Americans and one Briton, wasn’t actually a terrorist at all—just a homeless man who happened to find a Kalashnikov assault rifle in a park one day and decided to rob a train, shooting at passengers in order to get some money for food.