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.
"She got the money for her terrorist friends, maybe they convinced her that their cause was lost without a "martyrdom" operation."
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Maybe her whole "kidnapping" by the terrorists was a set up, and she went there willingly, so she can write about how well they treated her -- that is what she is saying, now when she no longer has to fear them.
Maybe they ran the checkpoint, expecting to be fired on, so she can agitate against the Americans, that they shot at her -- they just didn't expect anyone to die, but it was worth the sacrifice, as long as it helps their anti-American cause.
Things are not always what they seem. Your comment made me thing along these lines.
Sgrena also needs to get her story straight. First she claims the military used a flashlight, then a spotlight, then:
in an interview with Italian La 7 TV, Sgrena said "there was no bright light, no signal, and at a certain point, from one side, a firestorm erupted." http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=554726&page=2
Well, she is a communist so I suppose the truth ain't in her.
The soldiers said they aimed at the engine block -- that is very reasonable, because they wanted to stop the car, in case it had a bomb. Killing the occupants, wouldn't necessarily stop the car.
Besides, we only had the journalist's word on the idea that the agent died because he was covering her -- this sure made it sound more dramatic.
How in blazes would soldiers who were manning a checkpoint in the middle of bum-f*ck Iraq, in the middle of the night, possibly know that the passengers in the vehicle which was speeding toward them, and ignoring major league signals to stop (gunfire, etc.) were "Europeans, journalists, Italians, Communists and terrorist sympathizers"? Think about what you are posting.
"Then I personally hope that President Bush makes it clear to our friend Berlusconi that we demand an investigation into why the Italian car, driven by an experienced Italian agent, attempted to blow a security checkpoint."
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Exactly!
You mean the bullets were aimed at the car?
The car not stopping, but instead speeding toward a checkpoint?
In a region swarming with suicide car bombers?
BTW, machine gun bullets are not stopped by a single human body...even after penetrating a windshield. He did not save her by covering her with his body. She just lucked out with a shoulder wound.
Another money laundering transfer from the start.
I think we've had enough of your US Military-bashing, A. Hole.
An unmarked vehicle with local plates travels at a high rate of speed towards the airport and refuses to stop at the US military checkpoint. What did they think was going to happen?
A.Pole doesn't have a brain. Not one that works anyway. If it was known who was in that car, US forces would have wanted her alive to find out all she knew about her contact with the terrorists, where she was held, etc. To kill someone with potentially useful information just because of she was an Italian or a commie is absurd to the n-th degree.
Well, for the sake of our people who are actually having to make life-changing decisions in an instant, please try not to confuse them with the postings here from people frustrated by the willingness of some media outlets to portray American soldiers as "Scared, trigger-happy cowboys with blood on their hands."
Whew, long, run-on sentence, sorry.
But, really, when you get down to it, who derives the most benefit from something like this? For every person who thinks that American troops deliberately targeted this woman, there's one who thinks that something smells rotten in Denmark.
A website forum like this one is certainly going to be represented by more of the latter. If you went to DU's site, it would be 180 degrees different.
You might want to try looking over there to compare what those people think about this. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of people there who advocated trying and executing GWB or D. Rumsfeld for war crimes. Is that what they really feel? I dunno, all I know is that the Internet is an updated version of the CB radio syndrome, where everybody can adopt a different, more agressive persona with relative anonymity.
I completely agree. Unless there are significant facts that have not been disclosed which would justify what is happening (which I doubt), President Bush should immediately intercede and put a stop to this maliscious, demoralizing, and destructive prosecution. In any event, whoever is responsible (including the accuser) should be severely punnished for the harm being caused to the USA.
I have a little more faith in our military justice system than you appear to.
Plausible. And if true, a cell phone call (by the Italians) might have avoided the shooting.
The Italians reputedly paid $5 million to get this America-bashing communist reporter freed. As a practical matter the reporter was able to fund the terrorists she sympathizes with to the tune of $5 million. That will buy a lot of car bombs to set off against American Marines and soldiers.
"I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the whole kidnapping exersize was a publicity hoax (to damage the capitalist West in general and the USA and Berlisconi specifically). "
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GMTA -- I was wondering about the same thing.
I guess some of us are more willing to take the word of the US military, than that of anti-American, pro-communist, pro-terrorist sympathizer.
I sincerely hope that you're right. However, as a former enlisted man, I know for a cold, hard fact that if it's your word against an officer's, guess what? What size sledgehammer would you like? Unlike the Ski Lift fiasco in '99 where a hot shot pilot (an officer, naturally) got off after deliberatly flying his aircraft below the ridgeline to get a cool video of it (which he and his fellow officer conspired to destroy, and what the Italians are actually angry about) cutting the cable and sending a bunch of people plunging to their deaths, an enlisted man is going to be screw, blued and tattooed, and that's after being crucified. If you don't believe that, I would have to say that you weren't ever in the service. If you were, my apologies. Unless, of course, you were an officer. Wink.
I am a retired Air Force JAG. Believe it or not, some of us went after officers more aggressively than we did enlisted. I certainly did. I always believed officers should be held to a higher standard.
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