High Noonan

Peggy Noonan is at it again in the Wall Street Journal's propaganda page. From today's column: "Certainly lately, since the transfer of sovereignty, things seem to be looking up, but that may well prove temporary." Twenty four dead Coalition troops in one week in July in the immediate aftermath of the so-called "transfer of sovereignty" and Peggy finds things "looking up." Two massive car-bombings in the last two days kill 22 and seriously wound dozens, and ol' Peggy finds improvement. There is simply no other way to say this: Peggy Noonan is an idiot. Check that. Peggy Noonan is a bloodthirsty, warmongering idiot. If you don't believe me, check out her "Message to Fallujah" column of April 1, 2004.

Peggy's message to Fallujah was as follows:

We know what the men and boys who did the atrocity of Fallujah look like; they posed for the cameras. We know exactly what they did--again, the cameras. We know they massed on a bridge and raised their guns triumphantly. It's all there on film. It would be good not only for elemental justice but for Iraq and its future if a large force of coalition troops led by U.S. Marines would go into Fallujah, find the young men, arrest them or kill them, and, to make sure the point isn't lost on them, blow up the bridge.

The atrocity she is referring to is not the murder of the American "contractors", but the dismemberment and desecration of the corpses. The attackers had long since fled, according to all reports, leaving a crowd of what has been referred to in press accounts as "townspeople" or "residents" who proceeded to dismember and set fire to the corpses.

There are two things that are striking about Noonan's "Message to Fallujah." First, she refers to the townspeople as being armed - she claims to have seen it on film. However, none of the photographs I've viewed includes a single armed Iraqi among the crowd. The WSJ's own news coverage of the event indicates that these were unarmed civilians:

"Residents in Fallujah said insurgents attacked the contractors with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. After the attack, a jubilant crowd of civilians, none of whom appeared to be armed, gathered to celebrate, dragging the bodies through the street and hanging two of them from the bridge. Many of those in the crowd were excited young boys who shouted slogans in front of television cameras."

Presumably, Noonan feels it necessary to put guns in the hands of these people so that she can advocate killing them. Does this shock the conscience of anyone else? Even if Noonan can find a gun somewhere in the films or photos of this event, the vast, vast majority of these people are unquestionably unarmed civilians. Yet Noonan believes we should "arrest them or kill them" for desecrating four American corpses.

Peggy Noonan is a disgrace.