Well, look at this addenda posted at 9pm EST tonight by the radical left-wing Christian Peacemakers Team:

Addenda
23 March 2006, 9 p.m. ET

We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed, that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them, nor remembered those still in captivity. So we offer these paragraphs as the first of several addenda:

We are grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives to free Jim, Norman and Harmeet.

BUT then the belated, grudging expression of gratitude is immediately followed by this:

As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to nonviolence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues. We are thankful to all the people who gave of themselves sacrificially to free Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom over the last four months, and those supporters who prayed and wept for our brothers in captivity, for their loved ones and for us, their co-workers.

We will continue to lift Jill Carroll up in our prayers for her safe return. In addition, we will continue to advocate for the human rights of Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system.

Hat tip: Leaning Straight Up

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In Chicago, the Freedom Folks bloggers drop in on a CPT celebration of their members’ “release.” Check out their photos and note this comment from TBC:

We ended up having a long talk with Sara, who is part of CPT. She said that the phones had been ringing off the hook today with people calling to express their anger over the lack of acknowledgement of the troops’ role in freeing the CPT workers. May I just say HUZZAH?

Ditto that.

More reflections from Jake Jacobsen at FF:

Several speakers addressed the crowd at that point and MJ and I wandered over to listen. One thing I noted is that every speaker continued to use the word “released” and the best they could bring themselves to say about the troops who saved their people’s lives was “thank god it happened non-violently.” So said a nun who then disclaimed that they would support the troops by bringing them home. Uh-huh, that didn’t work for Kerry so why do they think it’s going to work now?

Another gentleman pursued the “it was better when Saddam was in charge” meme and I would have sworn he made a statement comparing the Islamofascists holding the CPT folks with the troops, though he denied it hotly when I confronted him about it. Unfortunately the PA system was a bit small and it was hard to hear. I still think he said it, he denies, there you have it.

Overall I would say that in many ways this was your typical lefty anti-war rally overlaid with a thin patina of Christian dogma. To my eye it was an awkward fit. How do we fight a war with Islamofacists? No one there had a good answer, merely relying on comforting slogans such as “bring the troops home now” or “killing isn’t the answer.” It was a typically lefty scenario, all negative options with no positive suggestions.

And it leaves the nagging question: what then should we do?

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Talk about ungrateful

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