Real issue overlooked

The Wall Street Journal has a short but excellent editorial today that pins the tail on the Italian government's donkey: why did Italy believe it was worth $6 million in ransom money to bring communist journalist Giuliana Sgrena out of bondage, and what will the terrorist "insurgents" (we prefer "bastards") do with that money?

Money quotes:

So far, all the world's moral anger has focused on the claim that U.S. soldiers were reckless, or even tried to "assassinate" her, as Ms. Sgrena's newspaper, the communist Il Manifesto, put it. But her claims in some interviews that her car was moving slowly and cautiously are contradicted by, well, Ms. Sgrena.
---
Not only does paying ransom encourage more kidnapping--of Italians especially--it also puts money in the hands of the enemy in a country where $40 buys an automatic rifle and $200 an attack on U.S. forces. The shooting of a speeding car at a military checkpoint in a war zone is an unintentional tragedy, but the paying of ransom amounts to a policy of deliberately aiding terrorists.

It has crossed our thinking that perhaps Ms. Sgrena, the Il Manifesto reporter, was not in as dire peril as she claimed, since her sympathies are almost entirely with the Islamo-fascists who would take Iraq back to the Stone Age if they had the chance. Certainly nothing she has said since her release gives her any credibility as an objective journalist.

Once more Euro-think, in the form of subsidizing (encouraging) bad terrorist behavior, can lead only to more violence, more American and Iraqi deaths.

With friends like these ...