"The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers"

"She's part of the blogosphere. Check out michellemalkin.com," says funnyman Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends, wrapping up a lively interview this morning with the blogosphere's own Michelle Malkin.

The topic in her Fox & Friends interview with Steve Doocy this morning was one Michelle Malkin's been on top of from day one, the anti-American fabrications of Italian communist journalist Giuliana Sgrena, taken hostage in Baghdad, released after "negotiations" (payment of millions in ransom) with Italian agents and then shot by mistake -- and her body guard killed -- by Americans manning a checkpoint as she was being driven in an unmarked car to the airport in the dead of night. Sgrena's shrill and baseless accusation that the Americans had targeted her was uncritically reported by a gullible European press all too willing to believe the worst.

The story embodies everything that's wrong with "negotiating" with terrorists -- it only encourages them -- not to mention the exponential amount of havoc wrought by clueless fellow travelers like Sgrena. By putting herself in harm's way, the witless woman drained off military resources that could have been put to better use rooting out the terrorists themselves. As Charles Johnson reports, "American soldiers [had] been searching Iraq trying to find and rescue --not kill -- Giuliana Sgrena since she was kidnapped in early February." Veteran Dutch war reporter Harold Doornbos happened to be sitting next to the hapless harridan when both were flying to Baghdad and filed a revealing report in a Dutch Christian broadsheet [via Zacht Ei, who provides English translation].  Excerpts:

'Be careful not to get kidnapped,' I told the female Italian journalist sitting next to me in the small plane that was headed for Baghdad. 'Oh no,' she said. 'That won't happen. We are siding with the oppressed Iraqi people. No Iraqi would kidnap us.'

Doornbos would be travelling on the ground as an embedded reporter with the U.S. military for security reasons, but the women knew better:

You don't understand the situation. We are anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, communists,' they said. The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers, the enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear.

With her bias Sgrena did not only jeopardize herself, but due to her behavior a security officer is now dead, and the Italian government (Prime Minister Berlusconi included) has had to spend millions of euros to save her life.

Not to mention her creating an embarrassing international incident and fanning anti-Americanism among the usual suspects.  But fortunately, Sgrena's anti-Americanism seems to have backfired. Prime Minister Berlusconi has announced a change of policy: "Any Italians rash enough to go walk about in Iraq are now on their own," reports The Independent.