It's so good to have Billmon back

Yesterday I put together a rather long piece on the shooting of the Italian journalist / hostage and the somewhat depressing reactions to it around Blogostan. What I failed entirely to do, however, was put the snarky edge on that story which it so richly deserved. Fear not! Whiskey Bar to the rescue!

U.S. troops near Baghdad fired on a car Friday night carrying an Italian journalist who had just been freed after a month in captivity, wounding her and another passenger and killing an Italian military intelligence officer, according to Italian and U.S. officials.

Right-wing bloggers immediately demanded the resignations of the heads of all major wire services and the three U.S. broadcast news networks for reporting the incident, which they said reflected poorly on the U.S. military.

"These are nothing more than vicious, cowardly attacks on our heroic warriors for freedom in Iraq," said conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. "The American people need to be protected from such defeatist nonsense." Malkin called for a far-reaching congressional investigation into the loyalty of the "so-called mainstream media."

"Even if the commie slut did get shot, it was no more than she deserved for faking her own kidnapping," added the conservative blog Jawa Report. Meanwhile, commenters on the popular right-wing chat site Little Green Footballs demanded an all-out nuclear attack on Rome to end the scattered anti-American demonstrations that have been held there since the shooting.

Ah, Billmon. Right up there with Tbogg in the snark category, and always ready with a pithy phrase at hand.