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As Lisa Simpson once observed as her brother rightly got his ass beat down, "It's funny how two wrongs sometimes make a right."

So it is with the news that Irish journalist Rory Carroll has been kidnapped by "armed men in Iraq."

Rory Carroll, you ask? Why, he's the anti-American sack of wet stools who accuses American soldiers of crimes against humanity in the pages of the Guardian Unlimited. Take some of his work for a spin. Go on. He won't mind:

Since the 2003 invasion US forces have killed at least 18 media workers in incidents for which no one has been charged or punished. "Whitewashes. There have been no satisfactory investigations that we know of," said Rodney Pinder, director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), a Brussels-based advocacy group.

Angry and frustrated, several radio and television networks, agencies and newspapers, including the Guardian, met last week to chart a joint response to the crisis. The gathering agreed to form a foreign correspondents' association and to jointly lobby the US military and state department.

This guy, if he's ever found alive, could get a job stunt-doubling for Eason Jordan.

In addition to shooting them, US forces have a habit of detaining journalists without charge. Weeks can pass before a bureau is able to confirm that an employee has been arrested, possibly injured, and held incommunicado in Abu Ghraib or another prison. A driver for the Guardian, accredited with the US authorities, was held without explanation for five days.

At stake is not only the existence of independent media, says Alastair Macdonald, Reuters' Baghdad bureau chief, but the credibility of US claims to be fostering democracy. "The American ambassador recently called us the fourth estate, a pillar of the democracy, but we're not being allowed to do our job here."

Oh, y'all could do your jobs if the mundane details of a recovering Iraqi society mattered to you. But, instead, you become an instrument of al-Qaeda and the other jihadi psychopaths in Iraq. You report on death and destruction to the near-exclusion of stories of triumph and positive change. Don't ever forget that, you Euro-wankers. I don't care how much I sound like Spiro Agnew: you are the problem.