I Guess She's Not Quite Useful Enough. Or Maybe She's Just Not An Idiot.

Useful Idiot John Martinkus, apologist for the splodeydopes:

John Martinkus was seized in Baghdad last Saturday and held for about 24 hours before being freed. The 35-year-old reporter was released after his captors looked up his name on the Internet and accepted that he was a freelance journalist rather than someone working for the US-led coalition. He sparked outrage among government officials and former hostages when he said his captors would not kill people indiscriminately.

"These guys, they're not stupid. They are fighting a war but they're not savages. They're not actually killing people willy-nilly. There was no reason for them to kill me," Martinkus told reporters on his arrival at Sydney airport on Tuesday.

"There was a reason to kill [British hostage Kenneth] Bigley, there was a reason to kill the [two] Americans. There was not a reason to kill me," he added.

I wonder what his take is on whether they have a reason to kill kidnapped British aid worker Margaret Hassan:

[Hassan] begged Britain on Friday to help save her by withdrawing its troops, saying these ''might be my last hours.''

The gaunt woman's wrenching televised statement delivered in between sobs puts new political pressure on Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, a day after it agreed to a U.S. request to transfer 850 British soldiers from southern Iraq to the Baghdad area to free American forces for new offensives against insurgents.

I'm guessing it would be something along the lines of "she's just a shill for the occupation."

Except that she isn't:

Hassan is believed to be in her early 60s and has done aid work in Iraq for nearly 30 years. She joined CARE soon after it began operations in Iraq in 1991, managing a staff of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programs throughout the country.

She was a vocal opponent of international sanctions on Iraq and warned British lawmakers before last year's U.S.-led invasion that a conflict could produce a humanitarian crisis in a country already severely weakened by the embargoes.

The more cynical side of me thinks the average Australian wouldn't give a dingo's ass if the splodeydopes offed a moonbat like Martinkus, so they didn't see any point in killing him...