How to create an anti-American conspiracy theory

The Chicago Sun Times has an article about Giuliana Sgrena's charge that American forces deliberately fired on her car last week shortly after her release from her captors, resulting in an Italian secret service agent being killed.

According to the Sun Times there is a big market in anti-American conspiracy theories:

In Indonesia, the word is out: the United States knew of the coming December tsunami, but did nothing, so that as many Muslim lives as possible might be lost in the storm. In France, a book titled L'Effroyable imposture, or "The Appalling Fraud'' presented the Sept. 11 attacks as a CIA plot to justify America's later invasions. It was parked on France's best-seller list and sold briskly around the globe.

And the newspaper offers a template of making conspiracy theories:

First, ignore the obvious, rational explanation: In this case, American soldiers, in an area where suicide car-bombing attacks are a regular event, shot at a car that did not stop. Replace it with pure fantasy based only on loathing of the United States. The more absurd the better, and this is a pip: Why would the U.S. dream of alienating a good ally such as Italy in this fashion, and over what? An obscure reporter from a fringe publication?

Yeah....but obscure no longer... What is the better story: "Journalist kidnapped while interviewing Fallujah refugees, released after a ransom was paid, which would fund further acts of terror"...OR "American ambush after release from peace loving religious captors"? Sgrena obviously saw this story, and ran with it.

Update: Shannon Love has a counter conspiracy theory:

What if the entire episode was just a scam to force the Italian government to financially support the terrorists in Iraq?

I don't think the Italian government was involved but I do think it likely that Giuliana Sgrena was. She is a communist with a long track-record of anti-American hatred. She was in Iraq in the first place to provide propaganda support for the "insurgency." Perhaps she simply thought she could help the "insurgency" more by becoming a high-profile hostage than she could as a "journalist." The "insurgents" are reportedly running out of money. Maybe they convinced her to cooperate with funding their operations.