Posted on 04/13/2005 5:46:08 PM PDT by Cableguy
Journalist and former hostage Giuliana Sgrena says that the American military is lying about the shooting at a security checkpoint in Iraq that wounded her and killed an Italian intelligence officer.
Days before the Pentagon is expected to release the results of its investigation into what happened at the checkpoint, Sgrena tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that shortly after her release by insurgents, American soldiers in Baghdad opened fire on her car without any warning.
Pelley's interview with Sgrena will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Wednesday, April 13, at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari negotiated Sgrena's release from Iraqi insurgents one month after she was kidnapped in Baghdad.
On the day she was freed, her captors blindfolded Sgrena and drove her around before leaving her alone in a parked car. The next voice Sgrena heard was that of Calipari. "The voice was so friendly, really, that all my terror disappeared," she says.
Calipari led her to his car and they, along with another Italian intelligence agent, headed for the Baghdad airport. "[Calipari] told me, 'I sit beside you, so you will be more comfortable, so you will...not be afraid,'" says Sgrena. "After a few minutes, he told me, 'Now you are free.'"
But they weren't free. American soldiers opened fire on Sgrena's car less than a mile from the Baghdad airport. "Seven hundred meters more and we are in the airport and we will be safe...and in the same moment, [American soldiers] started the shooting," says Sgrena, who tells Pelley that, contrary to claims by the U.S. Army, her car was not warned by hand signals, arm signals, flashing white lights or warning shots.
Calipari used his body to shield Sgrena from the bullets; she was hit in the shoulder, and he was killed.
A former U.S. Marine captain who led an elite combat unit in Iraq says that encounters at military checkpoints are often confusing, sometimes with tragic results.
"The hand and arm signals are hard to see; they're hard to interpret," says Nathaniel Fick. "The warning shots are difficult to see...almost impossible to hear in a speeding car at a long distance and the warning shot into the engine block is...Hollywood fantasy most of the time."
After struggling with the Pentagon's checkpoint procedures, Fick tells Pelley that he improvised a solution; he stole a traffic sign. "At every checkpoint we set up after that, we put the stop sign down the road near the wire and it was hugely successful," he says.
Fick tells Pelley he had to make quick decisions about cars that were speeding toward his checkpoints. "You've got four seconds," he says. "They're snap judgments...You make these decisions and you hope at the end that you've made more right than wrong."
Fick remembers his Marines killed one driver who seemed to be charging their checkpoint. "We determined that there were no bombs in the car, no weapons in the car and the other men in the car said that they didn't know why they'd charged at us," says Fick. "They were scared and disoriented and confused. ... In hindsight, was it a mistake? I think it was."
The U.S. Army declined requests for an interview, citing its ongoing investigation. The checkpoint shooting has had a profound impact on relations between the U.S. and Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is now seeking a way to withdraw all Italian military forces from the American-led coalition in Iraq.
THIS JUST IN....Ms. Sgrena HAS PROOF I repeat HAS PROOF Bush skipped Natl Guard meetings
I also heard she has definitive information about an Iraqi baby formula factory.
War's hell. CBS tries to make it more so.
Communist, and Italian terrorist-supporter Giuliana Sgrena has told two opposite, totally conflicting, versions of the event.
First, "'We weren't going very fast, given the circumstances.
It was not a checkpoint, but a patrol that started firing right after lighting up a spotlight.
The firing was not justified by the movement of our automobile."
Later, for her Communist Manifeso, she changed the story to: "There was no bright light, no signal."
The only interpretation is that, once again, a Communist terrorist-supporter is exposed as a liar
--and one who arranged and transferred $8,000,000 to terrorists to again help murder more Americans, Iraqis, and brave Italians.
She has been caught in her own lie.
And CBS? always broadcasts any lie.
Communist Bullsh*t Service strikes again. Why won't the MSM just admit they're anti-American?? They know it, we know it, everybody knows it, they admit they don't like America, but question their patriotism and they get all offended and throw a fit. I hate their hypocrisy as much as I hate their politics.
Ooooh.... This episode is going to play right into the anti-American crowd... While forcing more and more Americans who voted against Bush to question their tendency to vote for a Left that is obviously unhinged and becoming more so.
At least one can hope.
Didn't Lenin say that lying is OK in the service of the Communist political cause?
CBS is a disgrace! I'm fed up with that crappy network.
This one will infuriate. That Pelly is a American soldier-hating Red bastard. IMO
yeah... and in one interview she said the bullets came from the front and in another she said they came from the rear!!!
Not only that, but there were so many bullets, she said, she was picking them up off the seat by the handful. Hundreds, maybe thousands of rounds. (Yet did you see the pictures of the car?)
The biggest mistake: they missed.
She's just upset that she forgot her suicide belt at home.
but it really looked like this
Hey, that was pretty cool! You should post that on every MSM thread.
She maintains that the US wanted her dead. I 'll state the obvious that if for some bizarre reason we did, she would be pushing up daisies today.
TOOO FUNNY!!!
yeah... we're so dumb we tried to kill her in an ambush but she lived to tell about it!!!
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