Peggy Noonan is certain that Bowe Bergdahl is just like every other prisoner of war in the entire universe of prisoners of war. Not only is she clueless about Afghanistan, she seems to think that prisoners held by the Taliban are just like prisoners held in Viet Nam.

When Tom Friedman is the sane voice in the room, something is out of whack. He did a decent job of putting some perspective on the Taliban Five traded for Bergdahl, and that did not sit well with Nooners, as one might expect.

Noonan went into a trance-like state and channeled Alex Jones with her hoo-ha about how "strange" it is that he hasn't been released to speak to the press, hasn't been released to his family, and hasn't been paraded out in front of the cameras like a prize trophy caught on an African safari.

I guess when facts don't matter you can ratf*ck people with abandon, which is what it seems like she's doing while Bergdahl is recovering from five years in captivity in horrendous conditions.

Noonan ended this little segment by drawing upon her vast store of knowledge about the Taliban. With her usual lack of factual background at her fingertips, Nooners informed the panel and viewers that the traded Taliban prisoners "are major big serious operatives and players and there's no particular reason to think they will not be going back to the show."

Except for the fact that they weren't particularly serious operatives at all, and their "show" doesn't involve killing Americans. The Taliban was about killing Afghans who opposed their hard-right conservative iron-fisted rule.

Will the press ever get a clue on this? No matter what Senator John McCain declares, the Taliban is not Al Qaeda. The Taliban isn't responsible for 9-11. The Taliban was declared an enemy in wartime by the Bush Administration, but before that they were simply focused on killing their fellow countrymen, not Americans. In the name of conservative, backward religious dogma, I might add.