Mistaken U.S. attack wounds Italian journalist

[rustoffa]

BTW, The CIA never really "underwent" any fucking thing.

That was a joke.

[scorpioboy33]

Gee Wiz Here's a big surprise....NOT

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/06/italy.iraq/index.html

Ex-hostage disputes U.S. account of shooting
She was told "we were less than a kilometer" from the airport, where a plane was waiting to take her back to Rome, "when ... I only remember fire. At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up forever the cheerful voices of a few minutes earlier."

"The driver started yelling that we were Italians. 'We are Italians, we are Italians.' Nicola Calipari threw himself on me to protect me and immediately, I repeat, immediately I heard his last breath as he was dying on me. I must have felt physical pain, I didn't know why."

[Nickdfresh]

Journalist says U.S. troops fired without warning

By ANGELA DOLAND
Associated Press
3/7/2005

Associated Press
Members of Italy's military carry agent Nicola Calipari's coffin into Rome's Vittoriano national monument. A state funeral was planned today. Related photo on the Picture Page, C12.

ROME - Left-wing journalist Giuliana Sgrena claimed Sunday that American soldiers gave no warning before they opened fire on the car taking her to Baghdad airport, wounding her and killing the Italian agent who had just won her freedom after a month in captivity.

She also said she could not rule out that U.S. forces intentionally shot at the car Friday night, because the United States objected to the methods used to secure her release.

"The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known," the 56-year-old journalist told Sky TG24 television by telephone.

"The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostage, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."

In an interview with RAI, Italian state television, she said that before her captors released her, they told her, "The Americans don't want you to return alive to Italy."

Responding to an Italian Cabinet minister's statement that money likely changed hands to win her freedom, Sgrena said she knew nothing about a ransom payment, and no details have come out about how authorities negotiated her release.

U.S. officials object to ransom payments or negotiation with kidnappers, claiming it encourages further hostage-taking.

The White House called the shooting a "horrific accident" and repeated its promise to investigate fully.

Gabriele Polo, Sgrena's editor at Il Manifesto, said Italian officials told him that 300 to 400 rounds had been fired at the car. Italian military officials said two other intelligence agents were wounded in the shooting; U.S. officials said only one other agent was hurt.

The shooting has fueled anti-American sentiment in a country where people have deeply opposed the war in Iraq, but it did not provoke mass protests.

At least 10,000 people lined up in the rain to pay their respects to Nicola Calipari, the agent who died trying to shield Sgrena from the American bullets.

Draped in an Italian flag, his casket lay in state at Rome's Vittoriano national monument, which houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A state funeral was planned for today, and Calipari has been awarded the gold medal of valor.

Calipari was struck in the temple by a single round and died instantly, the ANSA news agency reported, quoting doctors who did an autopsy.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Sunday the shootings were a "horrific accident." He said President Bush called Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi to offer condolences and promise a full investigation.

"As you know, in a situation where there is a live combat zone, particularly this road to the airport (which) has been a notorious area for car bombs, people are making split-second decisions, and it's critically important that we get the facts before we make judgments," he said on CNN's "Late Edition."

The U.S. military has said that the car containing Sgrena was speeding and that Americans used hand and arm signals, flashed white lights and fired warning shots in an effort to get it to stop at the roadblock.

But in an interview with Italian La 7 TV, Sgrena said, "There was no bright light, no signal." She also said the car was traveling at "regular speed."

The shooting was a setback for Berlusconi, who has kept 3,000 Italian troops in Iraq despite the public opposition at home.

Communications Minister Maurizio Gasparri urged Sgrena to be more careful about what she said. "I understand the emotion of these hours, but those who have been under stress in the past few weeks should pull themselves together and avoid saying nonsense," he said.

Gasparri also said the shooting would not affect Italian support for efforts to secure postwar Iraq. "The military mission must carry on because it consolidates democracy and liberty in Iraq," he said.

Asked whether ransom was paid for Sgrena's release, Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno said it was "very probable."

Younadem Kana, an Iraqi politician, said he had "non-official" information that $1 million had been paid, Italy's Apcom news agency reported, although that could not be confirmed.

https://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20050307/1015514.asp

[Triumph]

Ranson for hostages paid to terrorist scum. money that will somehow be used to kill american troops, more than one im sure.
I wonder how this woman could see that there were no signals or lights while the cia officer was shielding her from bullets?
How much does she drive that she is an expert on what is speeding and what is not from within a car?
Can she see the speedometer through a human body that is shielding her from bullets?
More questions than answers, for me to poop on.
Is she telling the truth? it could be that she believes she is, but does that mean it is the truth?
If she had a mark on her head then she wouldn't be alive to tell her side of the story would she?
More questions than answers, for me to poop on.
And what is her view of the US?
Much to early to tell what the facts really are.

[flatbroke]

Troops firning on Italian Journalist

Love this site. First and probably only post ever.

1. If anyone can name a more dangerous road on the planet, please do. Those troops had probably a few seconds to make a life and death decision, and my guess is they did what they thought they had to to stop a suicide bomber. Anyone with a functioning central nervous system would have acted to protect themselves.

2. Italy did not give any notice to the US troops that they were rescuing her, or traveling down that road..... No alert to the US soldiers ahead of time. Gross incompetence on their part. A tragedy yes, but let's skip the grassy knoll theories please.

3. I've never served, but have huge respect for those that do.

[Nickdfresh]

March 7, 2005

DISPATCH FROM BAGHDAD
Traveling on a Highway of Dread
A reporter recalls her own wary journey on airport road hours before an ex-hostage was shot.

By Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — The route runs through a broad and flat landscape, bare but for a few date palms rising tall and dignified and the occasional small bush. Goats mill about, shepherded by young boys or old men. Except for the litter of plastic bottles and bags, the scene is almost pastoral, peaceful.

It hardly seems the place where people could hide and detonate bombs or jump out and ambush vehicles. But this is Baghdad's airport road, seven miles of dread.

It was on this road that U.S. soldiers opened fire Friday night on the car carrying Italian journalist Guiliana Sgrena, wounding her and killing the Italian intelligence agent who had negotiated her release from Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Having reported from Iraq for much of the last two years, I was dismayed to hear that a fellow journalist who had survived the unimaginable stress and fear of being a hostage was then the victim of an American military shooting. But when I learned the incident occurred on the airport road, it became, at one level, understandable.

Bad things happen on the airport road — all the time. Many people who travel it on a regular basis have a personal horror story, a moment when they thought, "This might be it." Everyone else has a friend who has had one.

Since the war, the airport road has not been any ordinary highway. It is a battleground; a place without rules or certainties, a place where there are no guarantees of safety for civilians or soldiers of any nationality.

For the ordinary traveler, there are two hazards: the wary, short-fused American troops who have lost dozens of their comrades to roadside bombs and ambushes, and the insurgents who target the U.S. military convoys that ply the route.

It is a road to be approached with caution, with a plan, with wariness of every other car and every American convoy.

About five hours before Sgrena was shot, I was on the same road, traveling in the opposite direction from the airport into Baghdad with what has become routine unease. Rather than looking at the scenery, I stared straight ahead and felt a faint nausea.

Many who have traveled the six-lane route have wondered how U.S. and Iraqi forces can ever expect to defeat Iraq's insurgency if they cannot even make this short stretch of pavement safe. As we drove along, I remembered a conversation I had before the Jan. 30 election with a Western diplomat who had lived in Iraq off and on for a year.

I had asked him if the U.S. military's goal was to secure more of the country before the vote.

He raised his eyebrows. "The country?" he replied, as if I had asked for the moon. "How about Baghdad? How about just the airport road?"

Most organizations whose employees must travel the route have rules for how to do it. Like most security measures in war zones, they are gospel until the day they don't work. Some people use armored vehicles and have "chase cars" with armed guards trail them, believing that although they may be conspicuous, at least in an armored car they will survive if insurgents open fire.

Others, wary that armored vehicles might attract the insurgents, will only travel in old Iraqi cars.

No one talks much about the reality that only the heaviest armor, the kind used by the military, can withstand a roadside bomb, and even then not all roadside bombs. Few civilian cars are fitted with that amount of armor.

I travel in an old Iraqi car, and dress in a black gown and head scarf so as not to attract attention. When a military convoy appears, my driver slows to a crawl and waits for it to get at least half a mile ahead before picking up pace again. We fear we might get hit if we get too close and insurgents open fire on the convoy.

As the road slipped by on Friday, I was struck by the calm of the scene, and yet aware of my suspicions. Were the three children playing in the scrub by the side of the road just in need of a playground, or had they been trained to step on a detonator as a U.S. convoy moved by? Was the dead goat stuffed with explosives? Could the quiet neighborhood with hardly a car in sight be hiding insurgents?

"See, that's where there was an IED," my driver Ahmad said, using the military's shorthand for improvised explosive device. "You can see the pit," he said gesturing to a crater.

He pointed to the charred shell of a car sitting a few feet off the shoulder.

"See that, that's a bomb car," he said.

"Last summer I was here, driving from the airport, and suddenly, 'Boom!' A Humvee ahead of us was hit. I said, 'It's OK, it's OK' and then everyone began shooting — the Americans, the Iraqis over there," he said, gesturing to the nearby neighborhood.

On this route, it's hard to know whether a car that speeds by a military convoy simply has a nervous driver, or carries a suicide bomber. Last fall, a bomber on the road targeted an armored bus carrying U.S. personnel. No one was killed, but the bus was damaged. Often passing civilians are injured or die in the attacks.

One of the mosques near the beginning of the route, Ibn Taymiyah, is well known as an insurgent center. When U.S. soldiers searched it, they found grenades, ammunition and guns.

Farther on is a neighborhood named Jihad and another named Furat, where former intelligence officers under Saddam Hussein live.

"Very tough place," declared Ahmad.

Insurgents hide in the neighborhood and scurry out to lay bombs that can be detonated from a distance with cellphones or garage door openers. Sometimes they shoot from the rooftops of houses.

The military is up against a community that may not like the insurgents but is afraid to turn them in. An Iraqi friend said he has a brother-in-law who lives in Amariya, another neighborhood near the airport, and knows which houses are used by insurgents targeting the road. "I know but I will never tell because they would find out and kill me," he said.

The Americans have tried to make it difficult for insurgents to operate along the road. They have chopped down palm trees and taken down fences that the rebels hid behind. They have put up observation cameras. They have handed out leaflets and warned people who live in the area not to collaborate with insurgents. But the insurgents keep finding new ways to attack.

On Friday, a military convoy sped by. We stopped, letting it go far ahead. Next we sighted two SUVs that looked like they might be carrying security contractors. Again we slowed, for fear that insurgents might target them.

Suddenly Ahmad sped up, barreling down the rough highway at nearly 80 mph. My worries about insurgents and skittish U.S. soldiers quickly turned to fears of an accident as he honked to get cars to move out of the way.

He believed we were being followed. A burgundy car with three men in it was visible in our rearview mirror, speeding close behind us. We couldn't tell if they were armed.

Finally, we lost them and slowed down. As we drew up to our hotel, we saw the car again — it had been the chase car of another news organization. The misplaced suspicion would have been funny, if the situation had not been so dangerous.

The Italians were on the road at a far worse time. Although there are few attacks at night, there is also little visibility, and the U.S. military suspects every vehicle.

Like us, Sgrena must have been frightened of being on the road. But having just escaped from insurgents, she probably never would have thought she would be mistaken for one of them.

[kentuckyklira]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
March 7, 2005

DISPATCH FROM BAGHDAD
Traveling on a Highway of Dread
A reporter recalls her own wary journey on airport road hours before an ex-hostage was shot.

By Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — The route runs through a broad and flat landscape, bare but for a few date palms rising tall and dignified and the occasional small bush. Goats mill about, shepherded by young boys or old men. Except for the litter of plastic bottles and bags, the scene is almost pastoral, peaceful.

It hardly seems the place where people could hide and detonate bombs or jump out and ambush vehicles. But this is Baghdad's airport road, seven miles of dread.

It was on this road that U.S. soldiers opened fire Friday night on the car carrying Italian journalist Guiliana Sgrena, wounding her and killing the Italian intelligence agent who had negotiated her release from Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Having reported from Iraq for much of the last two years, I was dismayed to hear that a fellow journalist who had survived the unimaginable stress and fear of being a hostage was then the victim of an American military shooting. But when I learned the incident occurred on the airport road, it became, at one level, understandable.

Bad things happen on the airport road — all the time. Many people who travel it on a regular basis have a personal horror story, a moment when they thought, "This might be it." Everyone else has a friend who has had one.

Since the war, the airport road has not been any ordinary highway. It is a battleground; a place without rules or certainties, a place where there are no guarantees of safety for civilians or soldiers of any nationality.

For the ordinary traveler, there are two hazards: the wary, short-fused American troops who have lost dozens of their comrades to roadside bombs and ambushes, and the insurgents who target the U.S. military convoys that ply the route.

It is a road to be approached with caution, with a plan, with wariness of every other car and every American convoy.

About five hours before Sgrena was shot, I was on the same road, traveling in the opposite direction from the airport into Baghdad with what has become routine unease. Rather than looking at the scenery, I stared straight ahead and felt a faint nausea.

Many who have traveled the six-lane route have wondered how U.S. and Iraqi forces can ever expect to defeat Iraq's insurgency if they cannot even make this short stretch of pavement safe. As we drove along, I remembered a conversation I had before the Jan. 30 election with a Western diplomat who had lived in Iraq off and on for a year.

I had asked him if the U.S. military's goal was to secure more of the country before the vote.

He raised his eyebrows. "The country?" he replied, as if I had asked for the moon. "How about Baghdad? How about just the airport road?"

Most organizations whose employees must travel the route have rules for how to do it. Like most security measures in war zones, they are gospel until the day they don't work. Some people use armored vehicles and have "chase cars" with armed guards trail them, believing that although they may be conspicuous, at least in an armored car they will survive if insurgents open fire.

Others, wary that armored vehicles might attract the insurgents, will only travel in old Iraqi cars.

No one talks much about the reality that only the heaviest armor, the kind used by the military, can withstand a roadside bomb, and even then not all roadside bombs. Few civilian cars are fitted with that amount of armor.

I travel in an old Iraqi car, and dress in a black gown and head scarf so as not to attract attention. When a military convoy appears, my driver slows to a crawl and waits for it to get at least half a mile ahead before picking up pace again. We fear we might get hit if we get too close and insurgents open fire on the convoy.

As the road slipped by on Friday, I was struck by the calm of the scene, and yet aware of my suspicions. Were the three children playing in the scrub by the side of the road just in need of a playground, or had they been trained to step on a detonator as a U.S. convoy moved by? Was the dead goat stuffed with explosives? Could the quiet neighborhood with hardly a car in sight be hiding insurgents?

"See, that's where there was an IED," my driver Ahmad said, using the military's shorthand for improvised explosive device. "You can see the pit," he said gesturing to a crater.

He pointed to the charred shell of a car sitting a few feet off the shoulder.

"See that, that's a bomb car," he said.

"Last summer I was here, driving from the airport, and suddenly, 'Boom!' A Humvee ahead of us was hit. I said, 'It's OK, it's OK' and then everyone began shooting — the Americans, the Iraqis over there," he said, gesturing to the nearby neighborhood.

On this route, it's hard to know whether a car that speeds by a military convoy simply has a nervous driver, or carries a suicide bomber. Last fall, a bomber on the road targeted an armored bus carrying U.S. personnel. No one was killed, but the bus was damaged. Often passing civilians are injured or die in the attacks.

One of the mosques near the beginning of the route, Ibn Taymiyah, is well known as an insurgent center. When U.S. soldiers searched it, they found grenades, ammunition and guns.

Farther on is a neighborhood named Jihad and another named Furat, where former intelligence officers under Saddam Hussein live.

"Very tough place," declared Ahmad.

Insurgents hide in the neighborhood and scurry out to lay bombs that can be detonated from a distance with cellphones or garage door openers. Sometimes they shoot from the rooftops of houses.

The military is up against a community that may not like the insurgents but is afraid to turn them in. An Iraqi friend said he has a brother-in-law who lives in Amariya, another neighborhood near the airport, and knows which houses are used by insurgents targeting the road. "I know but I will never tell because they would find out and kill me," he said.

The Americans have tried to make it difficult for insurgents to operate along the road. They have chopped down palm trees and taken down fences that the rebels hid behind. They have put up observation cameras. They have handed out leaflets and warned people who live in the area not to collaborate with insurgents. But the insurgents keep finding new ways to attack.

On Friday, a military convoy sped by. We stopped, letting it go far ahead. Next we sighted two SUVs that looked like they might be carrying security contractors. Again we slowed, for fear that insurgents might target them.

Suddenly Ahmad sped up, barreling down the rough highway at nearly 80 mph. My worries about insurgents and skittish U.S. soldiers quickly turned to fears of an accident as he honked to get cars to move out of the way.

He believed we were being followed. A burgundy car with three men in it was visible in our rearview mirror, speeding close behind us. We couldn't tell if they were armed.

Finally, we lost them and slowed down. As we drew up to our hotel, we saw the car again — it had been the chase car of another news organization. The misplaced suspicion would have been funny, if the situation had not been so dangerous.

The Italians were on the road at a far worse time. Although there are few attacks at night, there is also little visibility, and the U.S. military suspects every vehicle.

Like us, Sgrena must have been frightened of being on the road. But having just escaped from insurgents, she probably never would have thought she would be mistaken for one of them.

Make an mp3 of this and post a link. Reading all this even though it doesn´t fit their agendas is something conservatards always refuse to do!

[scorpioboy33]

silly hostages getting in the way of the troops bullets

[ODShowtime]

Re: Mistaken U.S. attack wounds Italian journalist

Originally posted by scorpioboy33
God a couple of years ago Americian Pilots Murdered Canadian Soliders in Afganistan...now this....I wonder how man innoncents die at the hand of Moronic American Soliders...putz...

Bullshit. No one murdered any Canadians. It was a friendly fire incident and they happen. Deal with it. Now journalists? That's another story.

[ODShowtime]

Re: Re: Mistaken U.S. attack wounds Italian journalist

Originally posted by kentuckyklira
More proof that a major amount of US servicemen are triggerhappy moronic goons!

this does NOT prove your assertion.

[Little_Skittles]

Originally posted by FORD
Funny how many "mistaken" attacks there have been on journalists, isn't it?

Probably because they know something that the american military doesn't want out.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Little_Skittles
Probably because they know something that the american military doesn't want out.

Yeah, like they are practicing VooDoo over there.

[scorpioboy33]

remember when the us airforce bombed the chinese embassy in Yugoslavia TWICE!....

[Satan]

Re: Re: Mistaken U.S. attack wounds Italian journalist

Originally posted by ODShowtime
Bullshit. No one murdered any Canadians. It was a friendly fire incident and they happen. Deal with it. Now journalists? That's another story.

Actually it was a result of the pilots being tweaked out on meth. So while that technically gets filed as a "friendly fire" incident, it's complete dragonshit that it couldn't have been avoided.

It's pretty common knowledge that tweakers don't use very good judgment. Not a good mental state for one to be in when you have to determine who is and is not an enemy. Maybe they should be doing blood & piss tests to the guys who shot the Italians as well?

[ODShowtime]

Re: Re: Re: Mistaken U.S. attack wounds Italian journalist

Originally posted by Satan
Actually it was a result of the pilots being tweaked out on meth. So while that technically gets filed as a "friendly fire" incident, it's complete dragonshit that it couldn't have been avoided.

Maybe they should be doing blood & piss tests to the guys who shot the Italians as well?

I know Satan. I didn't want to get into all of that. And I knew it was you who thought up piss tests. Nice profits on that one huh? Thanks.

BTW my buddy was in the paratroopers manning roadblocks for awhile. I'd rather he waste 20 of whatever than get blasted himself. Now he's back in the US as crazy as ever.