Eason Jordan, White Courtesy Phone, please.

I want to cry.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - American troops fired on a car carrying Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena as it drove her to freedom Friday after a month in captivity, killing the intelligence officer who helped negotiate her release and injuring the reporter. ...

The intelligence agent was killed when he threw himself over Sgrena to protect her from U.S. fire, [Italian news agency] Apcom quoted Gabriele Polo, the editor of Sgrena's newspaper Il Manifesto, as saying.

[Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi identified the dead intelligence officer as Nicola Calipari and said he had been at the forefront of negotiations with the kidnappers. The prime minister said Calipari had been involved in the release of Italian hostages in Iraq in the past.

OK, so, the car was probably travelling pretty fast, and it was approaching a checkpoint, and our boys are just trying to get out of Iraq alive, but...

Are things so chaotic that we don't have communications between the "good guys"? Was there no way for them to say, "Hey, we got the journalist at last, we're bringing her in, don't shoot?" Just how bad is it over there?

Meanwhile, in this country, the right-wing is crowing about the "democracy" there, and hounding someone from his job for mentioning that soldiers are shooting at journalists. And the President appears to have forgotten all about Iraq, now that the elections are over, preferring to spend his time holding potemkin town-halls for a Social Security plan the people are against. Wonderful.