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.
Dittos.
"hostage rescue hero"?
I'm sorry the man died but it's not as if he orchestrated a daring rescue mission. He was merely the facilitator for the payment of millions of dollars in ransom to the terrorists. How does that make him a "hero"? And since when is ransom payment a "rescue"?
no kidding......400 hits on that car would have resulted in an explosion at the least and NO survivors......that would have taken many clips of ammo or a few .30 or .50 calibers going full bore for half a minute...........no way
This is patently absurd. If this had happened, nobody in the car would have survived and there would be bushel baskets of evidence to support this silly story. The car would be chewed up like Swiss cheese and images of it would be paraded on TV all over the world as an example of 'American aggression and imperialistic belligerence.'
This story is just an effort at saving face...it's something to say instead of "Whoops! Our driver really screwed up....he should have slowed down and stopped at the checkpoint but he was terribly excited at the notion of being labeled a 'hero' upon his return and maybe getting some nookie from the reporter-ette later on, and he hates Americans too and so he simply didn't do what he was supposed to. Our bad....sorry to cause trouble for the Americans."
.....and her commie boyfriend too!
The bottom line is that the journalists are getting in the way of this war. If they go in there, then they are asking for it.
What coalition? We are wasting money and the only good thing i see happening is some europeans are getting killed.
"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."
Seems like they were pretty stupid to run a checkpoint at a high rate of speed. Prosecute the driver.
I have impression that some of you guys here would like to see her dead.
Let's see: there was no communication between the Italians and the Coalition forces, as in "hey, don't shoot, okay? We're driving a 2003 Mercedes Benz, black with license plate number 12345. We'll be approaching your checkpoint at the intersection of Hammurabi Avenue and Highway 109, with an ETA of 0130. We will be flashing our headlights".
Don't you think that would've been the smart thing to do?
Really. Her boyfriend claims it was a deliberate sinister ambush to prevent her from leaving Iraq alive. She claims 300-400 bullets were fired at the car from an armoured vehicle at close range.
Yet she leaves Iraq alive with only a shoulder shrapnel wound and only one person in the car died. Damn, those American soldiers are bad shots!
She is alive because the killed agent have covered her with his body.
Exactly. There would have been no survivors and little of the vehicle left. Maybe they didn't call for help for over an hour because they were too busy policing brass...
She is alive because the killed agent have covered her with his body.
"Most of Europe has been at peace for too long and Europeans have lost the basic skills to survive in a battlefield."
When did Europe ever have the basic skills to survive in a battlefield? In WWII they became territories of Germany within days or weeks of being invaded.
If those dopes were on top of things, our guys would have known of her presence. Wait until Tuesday for the real story to dribble out about how her saviors couldn't shoot straight, IMHO.
Tragic, but, don't speed toward a check point. Now go away.
I start to wonder if such attitude could be the motive.
What is your point?
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