The attacks on Jill Carroll by some (but not all) rightwing bloggers and radio commentators immediately after her release were as predictable as they were vicious. Somehow these guardians of pure thinking had themselves convinced that Jill was anti-American, an apologist for the insurgents, and maybe even a collaborator with the terrorists. Of course, since they spend all their time reading each others' bile on the Web, they obviously had not bothered to read her articles for the Christian Science Monitor in the months leading up to her kidnapping. Had they done so, they would have realized that her specialty in Iraq was reporting on how the war was affecting ordinary Iraqis and that she never engaged in polemics about the war. But somehow, word of her sympathy with the Iraqis and what they were going through filtered into the dimly lit brains of these astute political commentators as signs of disloyalty to America.

I say that not all rightwing commentators stooped to this scummy level, and it was refreshing to see a debate amongst conservative bloggers about the fairness of attacking her. And after all, some rightwing bloggers have already demonstrated that it is possible to put their heads completely up their asses and still reach the keyboard with their fingers. Yet if I had it in my power, I would whisk some of these jerks over to Iraq, put them in the hands of Jill's kidnappers, and see how they fare under the same circumstances. If they show as much cowardice under those circumstances as they have on their oh-so-safe blogs, firing away at people like Jill who has more courage in her little pinky than all these idiots put together, something tells me that they would be producing pro-insurgent videos from the very first hours.