Wounded Italian Hostage-Journalist Suggests U.S. Forces Targeted Her
Joe Gandelman
NOTE: We're totally REVISED this post due to a BBC report brought to our attention by In The Bullpen.
Wounded Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, held hostage by "insurgents" in Iraq, then freed and injured as her car was fired upon by U.S. forces, is not only disputing the U.S. account of how she was shot but strongly suggesting that she was deliberately targeted.
Over the past 24 hours it seems each published account statement from her gets closer and closer to making a flat charge that she was targeted. The latest,from the BBC is close to a flat out charge that the U.S. military was trying to assassinate her:
Ms Sgrena, writing in her left-wing newspaper Il Manifesto, described how her car came "under a rain of fire".In case you don't get the drift, there is this:At that moment, she said she recalled her captors' words that some Americans "don't want you to go back".
In another interview with Sky Italia TV, she said it was possible the soldiers had targeted her because Washington opposed the policy of negotiating with kidnappers. Everyone knows that the Americans do not like negotiations to free hostages, and because of this I don't see why I should exclude the possibility of me having been the target," she said.She said she did not know if a ransom was paid for her release - a policy the US does not approve either.
Some more details of her account:
In her account for Il Manifesto, Ms Sgrena said the kidnappers had released her willingly.When she got in the car, Calipari took off her blindfold and was "an avalanche of friendly phrases, jokes".
"Nicola Calipari was seated at my side. The driver had spoken twice to the embassy and to Italy that we were on our way to the airport that I knew was saturated with American troops. We were less than a kilometre they told me... when... I remember there was shooting.
"The driver began screaming that we were Italian, 'We're Italian! We're Italian!'"
Ms Sgrena has said the car was not going particularly fast.
Upon her release, she said, "They [the kidnappers] said they were committed to releasing me, but that I had to be careful 'because there are Americans who don't want you to go back'."
Another AP dispatch adds:
Meanwhile, an autopsy performed on the agent who died trying to save Giuliana Sgrena reportedly showed he was struck in the temple by a single round and died instantly as the car carrying Sgrena sped to the Baghdad airport.
U.S. officials including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have called Italian officials to express regret and have promised a full investigation. Meanwhile, some political parties in Italy are seizing on this incident to demand Italy withdraw its troops from Iraq but the Italian government has made it clear they have no intention of doing so.
What to make of this?Given the FACT that the FACTS are not totally out on this, the issue has now veered squarely into the political arena where political views influence how events are viewed.
Writes In The Bullpen:
Again, if the U.S. wanted Sgrena dead she would be dead. It should be that simple yet it fails to enter the mind of Sgrena. She also lays out one of the most flimsy excuses as to why U.S. soldiers would intentionally shoot her . . . because the United States doesn’t like to negotiate with terrorists. But the negotiations already took place therefore the consequences of an alleged ransom being paid will already start to happen.Indeed, if you look at how this is being analyzed, political views are in play here with those supporting the U.S. war generally saying it was a mistake and those against it suggesting she was or may have been deliberately fired upon.Sgrena should take herself out of this story and think about things from a more logical standpoint. It’s certain that she is still stressed out from the incident therefore hopefully she is making irrational statements only because of this stress, but these statements are right in line with where she was before she ever went to Iraq.
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- Wounded Italian Hostage-Journalist Suggests U.S. Forces Targeted Her
Lets back up a second; it wasn't deliberate because we weren't intending to harm a journalist or an allied servicemember - this was an accidentally shooting for certain.
As for the jounralist, let us not forget that she writes for a communist newspaper and thus has a gigantic, built-in bias against the United States.
It's certainly more plausible than the notion that US forces deliberately, with premeditation, targeted her car - and anyone lived. Give me a break. Plus to do this, the way it went down, would mean that intelligence would have to be gathered, the car identified, and then orders for the hit given, not to elite or "special" troops, but to ordinary Joes manning a checkpoint. Why not just kill them in a back alley, if that was the desire?
I do believe that in this situation, I'll take the word of US troops over a writer for a Communist newspaper.
That is where I stand also, in any situation. I support our brave soldiers 100%. Once again, the subversives are trying to smear our soldiers in order to undermine our War effort.
WHY?!
What would the US gain by killing an Italian? They're on our side; they're helping us out.
Ditto the "if we'd wanted her dead, her corpse would now be in about 100,000 little chunks right now" opinion.
The driver may well have been on a mission to get them shot. But, reading this, it's easier for a driver to screw up than I realized. Our troups have one brief chance to stop a rolling attack on their checkpoint. They have no sane choice other than to take that chance when approached by a non-responding vehicle.. especially at night. Our troops stopped the car; as they should, and must.
If the 'proof' is that one of her rescuers was killed by 'one bullet' why does this this not suprise me? Are they attemtpting to imply the US military used only one bullet? That's obviously a lie if Ms. Sgrena is to be believed on her 'rain of fire' comment.
Politics aside, you'd think people would want all the FACTS first. But, as the MSM has demonstrated, FACTS are the first casualty of their reporting on the US military (and it is because of someone targeting them, but its the MSM doing the destruction).
I believe that Sgrena wasn't kidnapped at all and that Capriari was shot when he "rescued" her and discovered this.
It's a conspiracy theory, but I think it holds more water than Sgrena's.