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Outrage as US soldiers kill hostage rescue hero
The Observer ^ | Sunday March 6, 2005 | Philip Willan Rome

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.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News
KEYWORDS: allies; berlusconi; bush43; checkpoint; communists; hostages; iraq; italy; journalist; probe; sgrena; sheisacommunist
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To: Lessismore

I feel bad for the guy who negotiated this Commie nut's release and was killed, but why must the Italians go and make it worse by LYING about what happened and trying to punish good American soldiers doing the right thing?! They better fire at oncoming vehicles that don't have clearance and FIRE EVERY TIME. Just ask the IDF what happens when you don't.


161 posted on 03/05/2005 8:56:33 PM PST by Cinnamon Girl (OMGIIHIHOIIC ping list)
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To: Lessismore
Outrage? It's us who should be outraged. You don't attempt to run a roadblock in a war zone. At high speed. At night.

What did they EXPECT?
162 posted on 03/05/2005 8:58:01 PM PST by CDB
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To: JCEccles

I couldn't agree with you more. What was your take on that Sky-Lift cable situation? (BTW, thanks for your service to our country)


163 posted on 03/05/2005 8:58:54 PM PST by hleewilder
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To: hleewilder

Clearly negligent. Grossly negligent.


164 posted on 03/05/2005 8:59:39 PM PST by JCEccles (If Jimmy Carter were a country, he'd be Canada.)
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To: hleewilder

The current situation was in a war zone. The one you speak of was not.


165 posted on 03/05/2005 9:00:17 PM PST by Kirkwood
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To: JCEccles

I'd be interested in your take on the Pantano case.


166 posted on 03/05/2005 9:02:04 PM PST by Mad_Tom_Rackham (This just in from CBS: "There is no bias at CBS")
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To: JCEccles

Then you might agree that's what the Italians are really up in arms about. They've never forgotten about that, and I can't say that I blame them. It was a really bad call on our part, and now, six years later, it's coming back to haunt us, as these things do.


167 posted on 03/05/2005 9:02:31 PM PST by hleewilder
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To: Jackson57

No kidding. *Maybe* the 5.56mm rounds might not have penetrated the agent's body, but the 7.62 vehicle-mount general-purpose machine gun certainly will. And from what I've seen, most of those (at least on the HMMWV's) have been replaced with the .50 (12.7mm) which will quite happily go through a brick wall, two people, another brick wall, and someone behind it. Sorry, but if they were firing a .50 with the aim to kill the occupants, that car would have been ripped to shreds. Sounds like they wre aiming for the engine compartment to stop the car short of lethal bomb range.

I think the only thing they did wrong was to use small arms instead of a tank main gun round to deliver the warning shots and followups. 120mm High Explosive rounds wouldn't leave Commieb****® around to complain, and nobody would have ever known anything more about her. Or cared. Stupidity of this order should be fatal.


168 posted on 03/05/2005 9:03:45 PM PST by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: LisaMalia

The "journalist" and the Italian press have discernable motives.

The President does need to have an investigation and he's promised one. I have no doubt our soldiers are innocent, the issue is the circumstance of the kidnapping and circumstances of her release.

A person terrorized doesn't react all sweetness and light about her captives unless they've either been brainwashed or were in a form of collusion with the captors. I don't think the first instance holds true in her case.

And why did the Italian government do this clandestinely? Why not inform of of her release? Why run a road block? I think we can safely assume the government may not wish the ransom to be publically acknowledged, but it doesn't explain why the driver committed a suicide run. It doesn't explain her questionable actions thoughout this whole affair.

I do appreciate the alliance we share with Italy. I do appreciate Silvio is under pressure for his support of this war and understand a few rhetorical moments of outrage. I'm sorry for the agent's loss. It doesn't mean I'm going to allow our troops to be sacrificial lambs for the Italian press nor this communist journalist. It doesn't justify paying a ransom that will keep the terrorists' armed.


169 posted on 03/05/2005 9:07:54 PM PST by Soul Seeker
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To: A. Pole

"Maybe these were not high powered rifle bullets?"

Bwahahahahahaha.................................


(In a war, at a checkpoint, only load nerf rounds)


Bwahahahahaha................


170 posted on 03/05/2005 9:08:19 PM PST by Gunrunner2
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To: Kirkwood

The point is, it's not the military situation that's the problem: it's the political situation. What happened at this checkpoint took place in a DMZ under combat conditions. Those pilots were flying in friendly times and in a friendly country, when they deicided to go hotdogging (highway to the danger zone, right?) and ended up killing a lot of innocent people in a particularly gruesome fashion. They did it, they had taken a video of it, destroyed the video after the fact, and got off. What happened then was a lot worse than this situation. When somebody does swing for this, it's going to be more about the event of 1999 than some journalist getting shot at at some checkpoint in Iraq.


171 posted on 03/05/2005 9:08:54 PM PST by hleewilder
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To: hleewilder
There is more to this than one man's word against another. There will be a large amount of physical evidence gathered to determine the facts. Incident pictures will have been taken, skid marks measured and vehicle damage assessed for speed calculations, bullet trajectories mapped, possibly even ballistics testing to determine who shot where.

I am a former enlisted man as well. I spent 2 years in a security detachment. I was amazed at the amount of evidence gathering that occured when a SeaBee ran his semi truck into a ditch in the jungles of Guam. That was peanuts compared to this. Nobody is going to get railroaded over this.

172 posted on 03/05/2005 9:11:55 PM PST by EricT. (Join the Soylent Green Party...We recycle dead environmentalists.)
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To: A. Pole
"There is another possiblity - maybe there were some rogue trigger happy individuals who hate Europeans, journalists, Italians, Communists and terrorist sympathizers etc ... ? Who whould not mind to see this woman dead? Just wondering."

BVwahahahahha. . .stop it. . .you're killing me.

Yup, some rouge guys manning a check-point KNOW that some European journalist, Italians, Communists and terrorist sympathizer is in the car racing at them, and thinking, "Boy, time to get a little payback."

Bwahahahaha..........stop it, really, stop it.
173 posted on 03/05/2005 9:15:17 PM PST by Gunrunner2
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To: Mad_Tom_Rackham
I'm perplexed. I don't understand why the Marines are hard-over on Pantano. Of all the services the Marines have the best reputation for not pushing garbage.

Now, it could be that they felt it was necessary to take it to an Article 32 but are privately confident that the IO will not recommend prosecution. I was involved in such cases in the Air Force. In fact, I was appointed IO in a few high-visibility cases precisely because the convening authority knew I would call it like I saw it without regard to whether it was a politically correct recommendation (some JAGs who are appointed IOs think it is their job to find a way to prosecute).

Although it was the convening authority, not me, who really made the disposition decision, the convening authority liked having a carefully-written painstakingly analyzed legal investigative report to back up the decision not to prosecute.

174 posted on 03/05/2005 9:15:37 PM PST by JCEccles (If Jimmy Carter were a country, he'd be Canada.)
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To: EricT.

Again, I hope you're right, but bear with me for a moment. Berlisconi (sp?) made a point that somebody would have to bear responsibilty.

Politcally (not militarily) he had to make that statement, because of pubic pressure. This pressure was already present, due in large part to the astonishingly easy treatment handed out to an Air Force pilot who killed a cable-car load of people because he was 'topgunning' it below a ridgeline and severed the car's cable. Not only that, but it was proven that he and his navigator conspired to destroy evidence. Clear cut, but the two got off.

Fast forward to the present, six years later, when this happens.

Berlosconi is not Bush's poodle. He has his own problems in a notoriously fractious political system. He needs his good friend George Bush to come up with a name or names and they have to make it stick, for political reasons.

BTW, how many officers did you apprehend and help convict?


175 posted on 03/05/2005 9:20:25 PM PST by hleewilder
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To: A. Pole

"...Serbs and Greeks also were very brave..."

Yep!


176 posted on 03/05/2005 9:20:44 PM PST by Atlantic Bridge (Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxilius, cur, quomodo, quando?)
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To: JCEccles; hleewilder
JC. . .and from where I sat (at the Sec AF-level, you are correct. Silly whining about how officers get away with stuff is uninformed.
177 posted on 03/05/2005 9:21:00 PM PST by Gunrunner2
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To: Gunrunner2

Oh, really.

Maybe you should enlighten some of us who saw examples of officers being hand-slapped while a noncom was left holding the bag first hand.

I'm not saying you're uniformed, I'm saying you've led a sheltered life and miltary career.


178 posted on 03/05/2005 9:23:12 PM PST by hleewilder
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To: CDB
Until proven otherwise, our boys acted in the way they were trained and did exactly what they should have done. Sad that this guy died, but they should not have tried to run the checkpoint.

Pray for W and Our Troops

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighting Troops

179 posted on 03/05/2005 9:26:10 PM PST by bray (Iraq has political Freedom, now Pray for Religious Freedom)
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To: hleewilder

Listen to JC.

You ARE uninformed.

Have a nice day.


180 posted on 03/05/2005 9:26:28 PM PST by Gunrunner2
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