And some discussion at this FR link: Italy Mourns...
Posted on 03/08/2005 10:13:31 AM PST by Crackingham
Now there's a plausible theory...accidental shooting by a colleague and he collapses, covering the (sic) journalist.
Having trouble with your link to the photo of the car ...
unreal the stink that has come about.
this incident proves one thing: if you are in iraq and are not cooperating and coordinating with our troops, your gonna get blasted. sounds like our soldiers did thier job...
and a wise word to any other italian spooks that may be reading: just because your a spook doesnt mean you can evade a US army patrol :P
You know, something is definitely wrong with this whole entire picture. It's almost starting to look to me like some kind of big set-up.
The link opened okay for me but here's the addy: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=14962_Maybe_All_400_Bullets_Missed#comments
I read on another thread that it was a pickup that the agent acquired. Which is it?
This shooting should be investigated, of course, but the media coverage conveniently overlooks that these guys just gave millions for the terrorists to use to buy weapons with which to kill Americans.
I can't view the pictures or comments on this link. I think you have to be registered at LGF to view this page. You might try a direct reference to the picture of the vehicle. You can get the file name of the picture by opening the "View Source" window and looking at the source code for the page on LGF.
I took the pickup reference to mean that Calipari drove it to pick Sgrena up at the transfer point. Supposedly, at least four Italians were in the vehicle when the firing incident happened...a driver, another security officer, Sgrena & Calipari. That's a lot of people to put in a pickup...a conventional one, that is. I'd think that changing vehicles would be SOP, so, taking everything into consideration, I doubt that a 'pickup' is the vehicle we're looking for.
And some discussion at this FR link: Italy Mourns...
Good pictures, Thanks. It doesn't look like a "hail of bullets" hit the passenger compartment. But the engine area looks pretty well shot-up. This looks like reasonably good markmanship by our Bradley crew.
But that's not the car. It gets confusing but, if I understood it correctly, the only relationship that car in the photo has to Sgrena is that the car in the photo was hit by the car the kidnappers used when they snatched Sgrena from the university. I'm not even sure that the two photos show the same car. Compare the rear passenger windows. 'Fiat' is mentioned at LGF...so maybe one is a Fiat and the other looks like a GM product to me. I really dunno since I'm not a car freak.
The Challenge is take take $6 million disguised as ransom for a bogus kidnaped victim and donate it to the terrorists.
The Americans have to be kept out of this,
A) because they don't want their people murdered with weapons paid for by the 6 million, and
B) All bragging rights for the heroic rescue of the kidnapped female, should be the property of the Italian Prime Minister.
One more thing, and this is important, There's a lot of people in Italy who unfortunately still believe in God.
Make sure you send out images of the victim "praying" for help. If anyone points out that she is a godless communist, just say that McCarthyism is showing it's ugly head in America...again.
I did not know about this...Whole new wrinkle.
The Italians, well some of them, are just playing up to the population. Far as I'm concerned it's a dead issue. They coughed up money to pay off terrorists for the life of communist sympathetic to the terrorists. Knowing they were in the wrong they kept it from us and tried to run a checkpoint despite warnings. Agent tragically dies. Commie lives.
Ours guys aren't going to be punished for doing their job without the American people raising Hell. I do have faith in our military system, but just in case, we'll have their back.
The Italians will just have to play their anti-American games alone.
Yes, you are correct and I agree. However, I selfishly think of American soldiers first and foremost.
Why was she even picked up in a civilian car to begin with? If you were picking up a hostage from terrorists who just dropped her off, would you trust that they wouldn't capture or ambush you during the pickup when no other soldiers are around? Where was the backup? This guy was the head of Italian intelligence in Iraq right? That's a rather pricey target.
Of course and so do I. The Italians seem not to have thought of the Iraqis at all though in running this renegade operation.
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