On Saturday, the war reached the taps. In southern Iran, a strike knocked out the desalination plant that supplies drinking water to some 10,000 people across 20 villages. In Kuwait, a power-and-water plant burned after Iranian missiles hit it — the second time in two days. * NBC News covered both under one headline: "Iran and Kuwait report attacks on water and power infrastructure as strikes escalate." Read it twice. Two countries report. Strikes escalate. At no point does anyone actually attack anything. The water plants just... experienced attacks, the way a town experiences weather. * The subhead is where the sorting happens. Kuwait's damage came "after Iranian attacks" — flat statement, attacker named. Iran's plant? "Iran said the U.S. struck a desalination plant." One bombing is a fact with a perpetrator. The other is a claim with a spokesperson. * To be fair to NBC: the U.S. hasn't confirmed hitting the plant, and the 10,000 figure comes from Iran's semiofficial Tasnim agency, so wrapping it in "Iran said" is textbook caution. But then you get to what the U.S. did say. CENTCOM, quoted in the same NBC piece, announced its seventh straight night of strikes on "military infrastructure and 'other assets.'" Other assets. NBC itself notes, dryly, that CENTCOM "did not disclose any strikes on civilian infrastructure." So one side's water plant has a named attacker, and the other side's attacker has a euphemism. * Al Jazeera, working from the same day's footage, went with: "Damage visible at Iran bridges and water plant after US attacks." Same event, same pictures — but there the attacks are American, no quotation marks required, actor included in the sentence. * Here's why the grammar matters. Most people never get past the headline. An NBC headline reader learns that water infrastructure "was attacked" in two countries and that strikes are "escalating" — on their own, apparently, like humidity. Who cut the water for 10,000 people in a 100-degree summer stays safely below the fold. Strikes don't escalate themselves. Someone flies the plane.