Posted on 03/05/2005 6:21:41 PM PST by Lessismore
Bush promises Italian leader a full investigation
The Italian journalist kidnapped in Iraq arrived back in Rome yesterday as fury and confusion grew over the circumstances in which she was shot and one of her rescuers was killed by American soldiers. The shooting in Iraq on Friday evening, which occurred as Giuliana Sgrena was being driven to freedom after being released by her captors, was fuelling anti-war activists in Italy and putting pressure on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
'The hardest moment was when I saw the person who had saved me die in my arms,' she said. Her poignant words and weak, haggard appearance as she had to be helped from the jet that brought her back from Baghdad are fuelling national rage.
Berlusconi, a staunch ally of the US who defied widespread public opposition to the Iraq war and sent 3,000 troops, took the rare step of summoning US ambassador Mel Sembler to his office.
He demanded that the US 'leave no stone unturned' in investigating the incident. President George Bush called Berlusconi to promise a full investigation.
Sgrena, 56, a journalist for the Communist newspaper Il Manifesto, was hit in the shoulder when US soldiers opened fire on the car she was travelling in as it approached a checkpoint less than a mile from Baghdad airport. The Italian secret service officer who had negotiated her release was killed as he shielded her from the gunfire. Two of his colleagues were also hurt.
Berlusconi prides himself on his close personal friendship with President George Bush, but he was grim-faced when he told reporters that someone would have to take responsibility 'for such a grave incident'.
The US Army claimed the Italians' vehicle had been seen as a threat because it was travelling at speed and failed to stop at the checkpoint despite warning shots being fired by the soldiers. A State Department official in Washington said the Italians had failed to inform the military of Sgrena's release.
Italian reconstruction of the incident is significantly different. Sgrena told colleagues the vehicle was not travelling fast and had already passed several checkpoints on its way to the airport. The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle. Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded Italians, the soldiers' first move was to confiscate their weapons and mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome for more than an hour.
Enzo Bianco, the opposition head of the parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's secret services, described the American account as unbelievable. 'They talk of a car travelling at high speed, and that is not possible because there was heavy rain in Baghdad and you can't travel at speed on that road,' Bianco said. 'They speak of an order to stop, but we're not sure that happened.'
Pier Scolari, Sgrena's partner who flew to Baghdad to collect her, put an even more sinister construction on the events, suggesting in a television interview that Sgrena was the victim of a deliberate ambush. 'Giuliana may have received information which led to the soldiers not wanting her to leave Iraq alive,' he claimed.
Sgrena was kidnapped on 4 February as she interviewed refugees from Falluja near a Baghdad mosque. Two weeks later her captors issued a video of her weeping and pleading for help, calling on all foreigners to leave Iraq. Italian journalists were subsequently withdrawn from the city after intelligence warnings of a heightened threat to their safety.
Italian newspapers reported yesterday that Sgrena had been in the hands of former Saddam loyalists and criminals, and that a ransom of between £4 million and £5 million had been paid for her release. The military intelligence officer who lost his life, Nicola Calipari, 51, was hailed as a national hero.
Also, she's the one who's claiming he shielded her with his body. We don't have any clear evidence, other than her word, that that is really what happened. And who has more motive to lie? The US soldiers doing their jobs or an anti-American journalist??
Sorry, you're equivocating. You must know that by posting here, every single word you send out is going to be scrutinized.
1. Nowhere does it say that the Italian agent was killed by bullets. Seeing how the woman was hit by shrapnel in shoulder, I would think that it's safe to assume that was because that was the part of her not covered by someone else's body. In all likelihood, the agent took the full brunt of the engine block exploding from .50 caliber ammunition, used specifically for that purpose.
We all go by our assumptions, right? Some people (including you, it would seem) read the headline and immediately think that those trigger-happy Americans have killed another innocent victim, but, wait, there's more to this than meets the eye...hmmm...she was an outspoken peace advocate who wrote for a communist newspaper and urged the immediate withdrawal from the 'occupying forces', ergo, the Americans deliberately killed her in retaliation, probably with Rumsfeld's blessing.
On the other hand, a lot of people (myself included) read those headlines and wonder "Was there communication between the two groups? Did the Americans, who are under constant threat from suicide bombers (who generally approach their checkpoints at a high rate of speed) even know that the deal was going down?
Why were the Italians so eager to avoid American checkpoints and spirit their charge out of the country? I've heard it said that they didn't want her to have to undergoe interrogation about the kidnappers by coalition forces. Why?
Finally, as another poster mentioned, this wasn't a hostage rescue, it was a bag man passing ransom money over to a terrorist group who desperately need it to buy more munitions with which to kill American soldiers with, a fact the Italians aren't exactly proud of nor want made public.
If you read some of her articles at Il Manifesto it is obvious that she is a terrorist sympathizer which makes her "kidnapping" and this incident very suspicious.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/
Vehicle traveling at a ridiculously dangerous speed. Driver's right hand gripping steering wheel, right elbow pressing the horn button, left hand extended out of driver's window, shaking fist. Head facing out window, yelling obscenities. Vehicle careening all over the roadway, endangering everything in its path. It's really quite a spectacle. Even the French are better drivers.
Maybe these were not high powered rifle bullets?
Ok, that just proves that you're a moron. US soldiers at checkpoints in Iraq, which have been repeatedly attacked by suicide bombers in cars wouldn't use "low powered" rifle bullets.
You are brutal. Not wrong, just brutal. LOL!
Forgive my skepticism, but I believe these are her words. I'd like to see pictures of the vehicle and the incident report before I even buy this part of her yarn. The words of a communist will never be trusted by me.
If they in fact had passed multiple checkpoints, then they knew the rules. Approach slowly and cautiously and stop at each checkpoint. The story doesn't hold water.
Yep. They were pretty good back in the day. :O)
Why should it be a problem? I do not mind if I am proven wrong.
Jawa's (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/070103.php) been all over this from the start: "Sgrena's vehicle was warned to stop but continued speeding toward a US checkpoint on a road which has been the scene of frequent terrorist attacks. US soldiers signaled for the car to stop, flashed lights at it, and then fired warning shots at the vehicle before opening fire on
the car. The troops then shot the car's engine block, not the passengers. The car spun out of control. It was the car accident which killed one occupant and wounded Sgrena."
And A.Pole, I'm sure the soldiers at the checkpoints are using low powered guns with special bullets that, wile they rip through steel and iron, they suddenly stop when they encounter soft human tissue. Uh huh, really.
ROFL! They sure did!
Yep. But logic won't dampen the propaganda parade in the EU. They can't let facts get in the way of their prejudice.
The pro-terrorist, anti-American punks at DU are celebrating this one with a reasonable troop supporting dissent, here and there.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1286417&mesg_id=1286417&page=
Ah, there's the rub. Talk is certainly cheap, scrutinized or not. I will say this: if there is an honest effort to answer all these questions that are circling around this issue, and it comes out that the woman was targeted by a special squad who were tipped off that she was coming through their checkpoint, I will be among the first to condemn it.
My take on this at the moment is that the Italian press is howling for American blood more for the deal in '99 when those idiots flew their plane too low in an Alpine Valley, severing a cable-lift line, plunging everyone in it to their deaths. Our guys got off for that, and frankly, they shouldn't have. Because of that (and, gee, I can't quite remember who was running the show then...you know, the guy before W...what's his name..) Bush is really going to have some pressure on him to show that our guys can't get away with murder like it was the SS or something.
The bad part is, they may just agree to throw some 25-year old Spec 5 on the rack to appease the crowds, whether or not the Italians were trying to do a run-around with us, their supposed allies in this thing.
Good point. There might be more than it meets the eye.
Sounds like this lefty "journalist" was part of a scam to subsidize the terrorists a la the Japanese "hostages".
"The US Army claimed the Italians' vehicle had been seen as a threat because it was travelling at speed and failed to stop at the checkpoint despite warning shots being fired by the soldiers."
You should always stop when fired upon by an soldier. Ask questions later.
"A State Department official in Washington said the Italians had failed to inform the military of Sgrena's release."
Who in the Italian government was not doing their job? Is it so difficult to that that, "Let's see. We will be going into someplace dangerous. Maybe we should coordinate this with the soldiers." Does not sound too difficult to me.
That said, it is really too bad this happened.
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