The benefit of the dumb (thoughts on the Sgrena shooting)

[Minstrel Boy]

Posted to my blog here. Links are live on the site.

The Benefit of the Dumb

"It can't be just said that it was just an accident.
We can't accept this, it is not possible." - Giuliana Sgrena.



Blessed is the state that hides its most egregious crimes behind the smokescreen of incompetance.

Consider the attempted assassination of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena.

Pier Scolari, Sgrena's partner, said yesterday "either this was an ambush, as I think, or we are dealing with imbeciles or terrorized kids who shoot at anyone." Since the latter has already been tragically demonstrated many times over in Iraq (graphically evidenced here), it makes an almost plausible explanation of what befell Sgrena's car, and a consoling fable to those who still balk at the notion that the United States has deliberately targetted journalists in Iraq. Which may very well be why the attempt on her life was made in this fashion.

Much of the world, and certainly much of Italy, has no qualms about assessing the contrary claims and evidence, and finding for intention. Most Americans, who lack a curious press in all but the most regrettable sense, will swallow their military's explanation, priding themselves on the fact that President Bush has promised an investigation, and presume the Italians were barrelling through a checkpoint. What did they expect, for Pete's sake? They had it coming.

The official line says that Sgrena's car ran a checkpoint at high speed. But "it wasn't a checkpoint," says Sgrena, and they weren't shot by sentries. It was "a patrol that started shooting after pointing some lights in our direction...we didn't understand where the shots came from.'' The car was only 700 metres from the airport, "which means that they had passed all checkpoints," adds Scolari.

The military contends it was uninformed about the progress of the negotions for her release, and was unaware Sgrena was on her way. But "the Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," Scolari says.

The US has the troops first firing warning shots, then shooting into the engine block to stop the vehicle. The Italians say they were hit by hundreds of bullets. The Observer reports up to 400 rounds struck their car "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." Sgrena's car, the US claims, is now "lost," and cannot be inspected.)

And what should we think of this: if the US forces regarded the vehicle as a threat, why did its driver escape unscathed? The only fatality was secret service agent Nicola Calipari, who "was killed as he threw his body across Sgrena." He died instantly, struck in the temple.

Before the invasion began, Kate Adie, then of the BBC, reported she had been told by a Pentagon official that any uplinks by journalists would be fired on" by US aircraft. The message couldn't be clearer: Embed or die.

Robert Fisk had this to say in April, 2003, about the deaths of several colleagues:

First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff.
...
Back in 2001, the United States fired a cruise missile at al-Jazeera's office in Kabul – from which tapes of Osama bin Laden had been broadcast around the world. No explanation was ever given for this extraordinary attack on the night before the city's "liberation"; the Kabul correspondent, Taiseer Alouni, was unhurt. By the strange coincidence of journalism, Mr Alouni was in the Baghdad office yesterday to endure the USAF's second attack on al-Jazeera.

Far more disturbing, however, is the fact that the al-Jazeera network – the freest Arab television station, which has incurred the fury of both the Americans and the Iraqi authorities for its live coverage of the war – gave the Pentagon the co-ordinates of its Baghdad office two months ago and received assurances that the bureau would not be attacked.

The year 2004 was the bloodiest on record for journalists, with much thanks to US forces in Iraq. How many of those deaths can incompetence explain? And when does Eason Jordan get back his job?

George W Bush makes the perfect empty suit to shoulder the case for ineptitude. Since such a man is titular Commander in Chief, it's no great stretch to imbue the US military with his characteristic imbecility. But that would be to presume a couple of things true, which I think are not: that Bush truly commands, and that chaos and ruin are never the intended result of US policy.

It may feel good to call Bush and his team miserable failures, yet they've stolen two presidential elections and a midterm, have dug into Iraq and the Caspian basin, and are looting the Treasury without obstruction. They may be failures in our eyes, but we're judging them on the terms of our values, while theirs can appear to us upside down. And we need to regard more than the surface of things, to make sense of their actions, and how they judge success.

For instance, the Bush White House is clearly bankrupting America: is that by accident, or design? Does it demonstrate incompent management, or is it the intentional manufacture of a crisis, to crash the system and create a larcenous Year Zero?

What makes us feel better, and which is more likely true: that they don't know what they're doing, or they do?

Here are two excerpts from Sgrena's work, which may speak to motive. First, a July, 2004 interview with a woman tortured in Abu Ghraib:

I asked her if she was held on her own all the time. 'No. It was then that they put me in a cell with other women, two women per cell. There were thirteen women, mainly wives of men belonging to the previous regime, and seven children. There was even the wife of Sabah Merza, one of Saddam's guards in the 1970s, who kept her hands plunged in ice to soothe the pain caused by the torture that had been inflicted on her. Another woman was in really bad shape: they'd kept hurling her against the wall. Another had been locked in a tiny cage for six days and couldn't even move. One of the prisoners had been forced to walk on all fours and her knees and elbows were in a terrible state. Another woman had been forced to separate faeces from urine, using her own hands. The soldiers frequently forced us to drink water from the toilet bowl. A woman of sixty, who had said she was a virgin, was continually threatened with rape.'

Did you know of cases of rape? 'Yes, but I'm not going to go into that. In our society, it's something you don't talk about.' How old were the women prisoners? 'Between forty and sixty years of age.' And what about children, how were they treated? 'We heard them screaming. They were tortured too. Mostly dogs were set on them.'

And last November, in Fallujah:

"We buried them, but we could not identify them because they were charred from the napalm bombs used by the Americans." People from Saqlawiya village, near Falluja, told al Jazeera television, based in Qatar, that they helped bury 73 bodies of women and children completely charred, all in the same grave. The sad story of common graves, which started at Saddam’s times, is not yet finished. Nobody could confirm if napalm bombs have been used in Falluja, but other bodies found last year after the fierce battle at Baghdad airport were also completely charred and some thought of nuclear bombs. No independent source could verify the facts, since all the news arrived until now are those spread by journalists embedded with the American troops, who would only allow British and American media to enrol with them. But the villagers who fled in the last few days spoke of many bodies which had not been buried: it was too dangerous to collect the corpses during the battle.

As she was released, Sgrena's captors - whoever they were - warned her to take care, because "there are Americans who don't want you to go back."

An independent foreign journalist, witness to numerous war crimes, writing for a communist paper. Would the killers and heirs of killers of nuns, Kennedys and Kings blink an eye at targetting such a person?

Sgrena's ambush was a colossal mistake, only because she survived it.

[marmar]

1. Good piece...

Many in this country still have this naive "Our government would never do that" attitude. But this is not your typical U.S. government - these are some seriously twisted mofos.

[seemslikeadream]

2. Che cosa abbiamo qui è un'omissione di comunicare

Thanks to The Zanti Regent

I'll try to have my thread locked MB. :hi:

[Minstrel Boy]

4. dang, you scooped me, on me!

That's pretty funny! :)

You were first, so we should continue there.

I just saw this was the headline story on buzzflash, which shocked the hell out of me. http://www.buzzflash.com/

[seemslikeadream]

5. No no I've already asked to have it locked

Buzzflash!!

[rzemanfl]

3. The car is LOST!!!!???? What do they take us for? n/t

[KC_25]

8. Okay...

IF this was an assassination attempt, then why is she still alive, that has to be the most obvious question, to me. If they were unafraid to lay an ambush 700m from the airport, then I am quite sure that they would have been unafraid to finish the job when they got to her.

If it was a laid in ambush using an armored vehicle (which means Bradley) why did the Americans not use the 25mm cannon, which would have obliterated the car and most certainly assured the death of all inside.

400 rounds, as big a number as it seems, is not that much (as I stated before) the cyclic rate of fire for a Bradley machine gun is 750 rounds a minute (slow rate) and 900 rounds a minute (fast rate..still not max).
(not to mention that soldiers have 30 round magazines in their rifles that take only seconds to empty, or that there could have been squad support weapons which also have an insane rate of fire M240 and M249 machine guns)

She was treated by the Americans, if they really wanted her dead, why didn't they finish the job then and say that she died of wounds?

To me, it doesn't seem deliberate, but then again I have been wrong before, and I am sure that I will be wrong again.

[rzemanfl]

9. What does any of this have to do with the car being lost? n/t

[KC_25]

10. meant to reply to the original..

sorry...

[rzemanfl]

12. Easy enough to do. Do you have any thoughts on how they

could LOSE the effing car?

[KC_25]

13. no...

That is where the doubts come in..
But we have to cover this from all possible angles so that when someone comes and says "x,y,z"..we already have it thought out, and have logical answers to whatever angle that someone may come from.
but to "lose" the car? Thats a stretch...

[rzemanfl]

14. This is our problem. We seem to think we have to have an

explanation for everything. They lie about everything and we beat ourselves to death disproving the lie when they are 17 lies down the road already. I think we need to just start saying "lying Republican mother****ers" to everything they say and force them to prove it's the truth. If a Republican came in all wet and told me it was raining out, I'd go look out the window.

I think the car is "lost" because it is so riddled with bullet holes that it would be a public relations disaster if pictures of it got out.

[lonestarnot]

19. With some C-4.... n/t

[Babel_17]

30. My thinking

You raise valid points.

Any rational explanation of events would have to account for them.

Yet it's not impossible or even very hard to come up with a scenario that would include a pre-meditated malice towards the occupant(s) of the car that was shot up and the fact that the force that was brought to arms against them was relatively limited and stopped well short of killing all the passengers.

Consider: Let's assume for the sake of this argument that there was malevolent intent but first we must consider what might be the nature of it.

We have Ms. Sgrena, a journalist who writes articles critical of the US and coalition forces operations in Iraq. We have her capture which rouses the interest of intelligence agencies especially as her capture was followed by her entreaties to her gov't to withdraw from Iraq.

We have a possible large ransom in question here and such ransoms can fairly be characterized as discomforting to the US led coalition.

Imo the whole saga of Ms. Sgrena while she was in Iraq from her first article till the day she was released represents a behavior that the US led coalition dreads seeing being emulated by others.

It's arguable therefor that it was decided by some that a very strong message reflecting the coalition's displeasure needed to be sent.

We can discuss what opportunities were available to the coalition to send this message vis a vis Ms. Sgrena but, again for the sake of argument, let's assume that time constraints meant the message would have to be sent while she was en route to the airport.

Here's where speculation really descends to the vague but I see several possibilities, all variants on the same theme.

It was arranged for orders to be given that would result in the occupants of the car getting a "hard time". No orders were given to kill them. It was just strongly suggested that the military should be on an extra careful lookout for cars heading to the airport during the time frame Ms. Sgrena's auto would be on those roads.

We could speculate forever on just how such suggestions/orders could be nuanced. This argument would have to concede that the plotters were giving up a good deal of any measure of surety for the plans success that they would otherwise be able to achieve through more direct orders and plans.

However the advantage of never coming out and directly targeting Ms. Sgrena's car should be obvious I think.

US soldiers being used as pawns in such games of intrigue and payback would explain why the troops stopped at just disabling the vehicle.

They followed orders in stopping this vague threat and now proceeded professionally to do the followup.

As to confiscating phones etc. I can but say they are details, relatively, and the context of those details will be much better understood once the much bigger picture is understood.




All of the above doesn't reflect any conclusions, however tentative, on my part.

I'm just rolling around in my head different scenarios that jibe with what seems to be the most likely facts of the matter.

War is messy, sloppy and inherently dangerous and never so much so as when fighting against insurgents.

Given that, I won't be all that surprised to learn that this terrible incident can be chalked up to reasons we are all already too familiar with. Everyone is at risk in Iraq and bad things will happen to good people for no other reason than that they are in an area where weapons will inevitably be discharged.

[LynnTheDem]

40. With Italian troops and a US colonel 700 metres away waiting for the car

to show any minute, and hearing the sound of 300-400 shots fired into a car, do you think the Italian troops all just stood around looking at each other?

Perhaps they did...and perhaps they rushed out the 700 metres; what we would call "witnesses".

[Karenina]

6. Danny Schechter's take on it...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/media/2005/0228target.htm

Before the war, the Pentagon issued warnings that sounded like threats, saying it would not guarantee the safety of journalists who were not officially "embedded" into assigned U.S. military units. Pentagon publicist Victoria Clarke, around the time the war began, said that journalists who went out on their own were "putting themselves at risk."

On March 8, 2003, 12 days before the invasion, Kate Aidie, then a war correspondent for the BBC, said on RTE radio in Ireland that she was told by Pentagon officials "that any uplinks by journalists would be fired on" by coalition aircraft. What they were doing was creating an environment of intimidation and threat. This was a ploy to ensure that the reporters who did go to Iraq without Pentagon cooperation would be blamed when anything happened.

<snip>

...The International Federation of Journalists angrily demanded a real probe. Phillip Knightley, a respected historian on war and media and author of "The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and
Myth-Maker From the Crimea to Kosovo," correctly said, "There will be no investigation." He added, "I believe that the occasional shots fired at media sites are not accidental and that war correspondents will now be targeted."

As a former CNN producer, I find that the Jordan incident chilled debate and diverted us from the real issue of how the U.S. military spun media coverage and why networks went along. A number of journalists covering Iraq-not just Jordan-continue to believe journalists were targeted. The citizens-initiated World Tribunal on Iraq, which met in Rome in February, asks a question that can't be deflected: "Are Mr. Jordan's claims accurate?" In its report, it joined "the calls by international media groups and the families of dead journalists for a full independent investigation by an international team of journalists who should be given the right to question members of the military."

"If independent journalists can be killed with impunity," said the report, "and executives forced out for asking about it, aren't we facing something more serious than has been raised so far?"

The 64 trillion dollar question. :shrug:

[lonestarnot]

21. Dannyboy concludes with a very curious question and more evidence

of a war being played out and paid out of our pockets. I prefer the rogue reports to imbedded reports. Hope these people are not now officially targets.

[CoffeeCat]

31. After Eason Jordan made his comments...

...everyone rallied to say that he didn't what he said.

Several talking heads, including David Gergen, were furiously doing the media circuit--explaining that Jordan didn't mean what he said and pulled back from his initial comments.

It appears that our sick, evil government is targeting journalists--so the truth can be hidden. Jordan let the comment slip.

This is happening.

Why...are American's covering these heinous, insidious crimes--by our government? Why are people like David Gergen covering and protecting people who are rotting this country from the inside out.

What compels so many people to enable these thug criminals in this administration?

Why can't someone stand up for what is decent and right in this country?

[Nothing Without Hope]

32. This line says it all

"If independent journalists can be killed with impunity," said the report, "and executives forced out for asking about it, aren't we facing something more serious than has been raised so far?"

I have a feeling they picked the wrong journalist to try to kill this time. She is not going to shut up and she has supporters. The blivet**'s fascist thugs don't rule Italy. And they're claiming they LOST the frigging CAR? Geez, if that's not an admission...

[zippy890]

7. Excellent post n/t

:kick:

[Disturbed]

11. The ignorance and stupidity of Freeps..

is never surprising. A Pathologist would know at what range a bullet entered a body. An independent investigation is paramount in this case. No one will accept the DOD version of any investigation. It is akin to foxes investigating hen house murders.

The family of the slain man and the injured reporter should file a law suit

[TOOLZ]

15. As jaded and cynical as I am..

I think it was an example of yet another fuckup of just mowing down somethng that moves by the "heroes" we're not supposed to question or criticize. So many innocent Iraqis are dying like this, but we never hear about it.

Further example of the US troops' incompetence is firing 300-400 rounds and only killing one person with one bullet.

[bpilgrim]

17. goin with the gut, eh?

hey, it's a popular method, no?

peace

[TOOLZ]

20. I'm surprised how often my gut is spot-on

Ask me something, I'll make a prediction!

[bpilgrim]

23. so that's where that nic came from -> TOOLZ

if the show fits, eh :p

peace

[Octafish]

16. "Whatever you have done to little children you have done to me!" -- Jesus

From Sgrena:

And what about children, how were they treated?

'We heard them screaming. They were tortured too. Mostly dogs were set on them.'

[bpilgrim]

18. the M$MW have to this very day not touched this with a TEN FOOT POLE!

the bloggers really need to stay on top of this and spread the word by word of mouth as well till this story gets told.


http://images.globalfreepress.com

peace

[Octafish]

22. That poor girl saw her mom and dad killed before her eyes.

They were "driving through a checkpoint" and refused to stop. She is covered in her parent's and siblings' blood.

Thus it is understandable that the images and stories of this war are completely stage-managed by the Bush Gang. Oliver North blames the free press for losing Vietnam.

To think America used to be a democracy. The Pentagon and the State Department should be ashamed.

The BFEE is real and has been in business since 22 Nov 1963. Why so many -- so many on DU, evidently -- refuse to see that is beyond my ken.

We must keep up the fight, Billy P. If these turds think they can hoodwink the American people, they've got another thing coming.

[bpilgrim]

25. my co-workers jaws droped when i told them of us torturing CHILDREN

in front of their MOTHERS :cry:

everyone who knows me knows, i used to keep quiet... not anymore.

thanks for pass'n the word Octafish and keeping the truth ALIVE :toast:

peace

[seemslikeadream]

28. Terrore e strage a Baghdad

A bit translated

Be hung always than it does not be able to be us nothing of worst of the now just spends under the bombardments and instead the night, every night, reserves new surprised. The worst arrived last night, towards the seven, with the bombardment of a market in the district sciita of Shula to north west of Baghdad: 55 the dead, tens and tens the injured given shelter to in the hospital An-Nour. The stage is the same one that has presented two days does, in another district sciita, Shaab. A crater and around the destruction. The images, those of the destruction: bodies bloodied on the ground, compassionately covered from the first rescuers, stages of pain and of despair. Between the bundles on the covered floor of rubble there it is also what remains of two children. To the close hospital An-Nour a woman is hit repeatedly the I turn, screaming: from the other part of a window there is a young man, blindfolded and bleeding. The minister of the information To The Sahhaf and its spokesperson list the artcmetica of a day devastating: seventy dead yesterday to Baghdad, the official voice iraqui says, the first terrible bombs against-bunker at work. The time was attractive - thing that helps the aerial Americans and their load. Thursday evening the cacciabombardieri were themselves still a fierce time against the iraqui capital and its inhabitants. And yesterday, Friday, did not be certain the muslim day of party to intimidate the pilots of the hunting. The war yesterday entered also in the mosques, in the sermons of the varied imam. In the Um El-marik, the mosque «mother of everything the battles», from the definition coniata from Saddam Hussein in occasion of the war of the Gulf of 1991 and built actual to remember the resistance in those days, is touched to the imam Thaer El-Ani to revolt itself to the faithful of high rank. More than a mosque in fact the Um El-Marik is a monument, expensive, little attended in normal times, but used for the large occasions. The war undoubtedly deserves a prayer of the Friday in the suburban Um El-Marik, where the situation yesterday at noon specially was stretched out because a bomb was just little fall distant provoking dead and fear. Between a some Corano said and an appeal of Allah, the imam ensured - with the self-governing of a man of God - the iraquis of the victory: «The victory will be from our part because we believe in God, we pray of more and God will help us. The victory verrà, inshallah». «All of the soldiers that protect will go us in paradise», added, remembering however that «God is the sole that can give and to commit suicide».
http://www.speedoflife.org/mar2003/terrore.html

[seemslikeadream]

24. My truth (La mia verità)

....

In the first days of my abduction I didn't shed a single tear. I was simply mad. I told them directly: "How can you abduct me, if I am against the war?" And they started a fierce debate. "Yes, because you want to speak to the people, we would never abduct a reporter who stays shut in the hotel. And then the fact you say you're against the war could be a cover up." I would reply, almost provoking them: "It's easy to abduct a weak woman like me, why don't you do it to the American officers?" I insisted that they couldn't ask the Italian government to withdraw its troops; that they had to address the Italian people who were and are against the war, not Italian government.

It was a month of ups and downs, moments of hope and moments of deep depression. Like when the first Sunday after my abduction, in the Baghdad house where I was prisoner and where there was a satellite television dish, they let me see the EuroNews. I saw my poster on the Rome city hall building. I was relieved. Soon after, however, a claim from the Jihad announced I would be executed if Italy didn't withdraw its troops. I was frightened. But they reassured me that it wasn't them, that people should have mistrusted those proclamations, that they were a "provocation." I often asked the one who seemed more approachable and who looked more like a soldier: "Tell me the truth, you will kill me". Nonetheless, many times, we talked. "Come see a movie on TV," they told me, while a Wahhabi woman, covered from head to foot, hung around the house taking care of me.

The abductors seemed a very religious group, constantly praying the Koran verses. But on Friday, at the time of my release, the one who seemed the most religious and who used to wake up at 5 o'clock every morning to pray, "congratulated" me and incredibly shook my hand—it is not a usual behaviour for an Islamic fundamentalist—adding "If you behave, you'll leave soon." That was followed by a rather humorous episode. One of my two guards came to me astonished because the TV showed my photographs displayed in European towns and also on Totti. Yes, Totti (the Rome football team player, T.N.). The guard said he said he was a Rome team fan and he was amazed that his favourite player had taken to field with "Free Giuliana" on his T-shirt.

I now live with no more certainties. I find myself deeply weak. I failed in my belief. I had always claimed there was need to go tell about that dirty war. And I had to decide whether to stay in the hotel or going out and chance being abducted because of my work. "We don't want anyone any more," the abductors told me. But I wanted to tell about the bloodbath in Falluja through the refugees' tales. And that morning the refugees and some of their "leaders" didn't listen to me. I had in front of me the evidence of what the Iraqi society has become with the war and they threw their truth in my face: "We don't want anyone. Why don't you stay home? What such interview can be useful for?". The worst collateral damage, the war killing communication, was falling on me. On me, who had risked it all, challenging the Italian government that didn't want reporters gong to Iraq, and the Americans who don't want our work that gives witness to what that country has really turned into with the war, despite what they call elections.

Now I wonder. Is their refusal a failure?

more
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m10180

[chlamor]

26. Targeting Civilians-Iraqi Death Squads In Operation

Here is some background, from Chris Floyd, on previous terrorist campaigns directed by intelligence services of the West. There is known to be at least one pro-occupation death squad, Saraya Iraqna, already operating for the "coalition". Of course there will be special ops crawling all over the place. Here is something to chew on:


'You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West -- against their own populations. Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks -- on train stations, supermarkets, cafes and offices -- which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies and frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government leaders -- and their elitist cronies.

First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for "sword") is still protected to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments of the truth over the years. These have been gathered in a new book, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org.

<snip>

Last month, it was widely reported that the Pentagon is considering a similar program in Iraq. What was not reported, however -- except in the Iraqi press -- is that at least one pro-occupation death squad is already in operation. Just days after the Pentagon plans were revealed, a new militant group, "Saraya Iraqna," began offering big wads of American cash for insurgent scalps -- up to $50,000, the Iraqi paper Al Ittihad reports. "Our activity will not be selective," the group promised. In other words, anyone they consider an enemy of the state will be fair game.

Strangely enough, just as it appears that the Pentagon is establishing Gladio-style operations in Iraq, there has been a sudden rash of terrorist attacks on outrageously provocative civilian targets, such as hospitals and schools, the Guardian reports. Coming just after national elections in which the majority faction supported slates calling for a speedy end to the American occupation, the shift toward high-profile civilian slaughter has underscored the "urgent need" for U.S. forces to remain on the scene indefinitely, to provide security against the ever-present terrorist threat. Meanwhile, the Bushists continue constructing their long-sought permanent bases in Iraq: citadels to protect the oil that incoming Iraqi officials are promising to sell off to American corporations -- and launching pads for new forays in geopolitical domination.

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FLO502B.html

[Octafish]

27. Why would BFEE want to kill a Journalist? To kill the Truth.

Of course, when it comes to KILLING, being Fascist helps.

D'ya think any of this will make it on American airwaves -- maybe owned by the People, but used by Corporate McPravda?

Rome tries to limit fallout from Iraq death

By Tony Barber in Rome
Published: March 7 2005 02:00 | Last updated: March 7 2005 02:00

Italy's centre-right government yesterday scrambled to contain the damage to itself and to US-Italian relations after US troops in Iraq killed an Italian secret service agent and wounded an Italian hostage just set free from her captors.

As anger and shock spread across the nation, thousands of Italians flocked to the Victor Emmanuel II marble monument in central Rome where the body of Nicola Calipari, the dead agent, lay in state.

SNIP...

Since the invasion of Iraq two years ago, the US military has undertaken several investigations into what it has described as the accidental killings of foreign reporters and media workers. Some big news organisations remain dissatisfied with the explanations.

In her account in Il Manifesto, Ms Sgrena also questioned whether the US had deliberately sought to kill her, a view that was ridiculed by Italian intelligence, according to Corriere della Sera, the country's leading paper.

CONTINUED... (GET IT BEFORE FT ARCHIVE$)...

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d0b90d06-8ead-11d9-8aae-00000e2511c8.html

Il Duce Lives, eh Silvio?

[Octafish]

38. What happened to the car?

I wonder if it got hit by 400 rounds or was shot once as a warning, say. Knowing the BFEE's track record, I'd bet it got hit by 400 rounds.

So, where's the car?

Where's the evidence?

Why isn't CNN interested in this question?

[seemslikeadream]

29. Diary of a permanent war

Giuliana Sgrena The front Iraq. Diary of a permanent war THERE IS a manner to judge it "quality" of a book that offers some keys to interpret, to so little distance of time, the events that tells. The quality is that of the duration. In this case is had the luck of to be able measure it with sufficient precision. Gone out before some few day moments important of the iraqui recentissima story , this "Diary of a permanent war" has not of it nevertheless resented. For two reasons, above all. The before it is that Giuliana Sgrena is granted, in the initial part of the book, the flavor of the impressionism. Perhaps the subjective one is the sole shot to tell not the war of the plastics and of the long fields on the hardened motions of columns, but the impact of the war on the lives of men and women. The point of fall of a bomb from 500 kilograms, the tears of the director of the museum of Baghdad just devastated in the days of the chaos, the nurses arms that protect the hospitals from the thiefs are instantaneous of chronicle. However they tell the Story with more precision of any press conference pentagonale or television vesposo discussion. The daily course of the story and the cleanliness of the writing create a plan-clear sequence, essential, dry. Rich of humanity, that it shine through in the modesty with that sent off it of the obvious one it draws near to individual a lot of dramas, known for name. To page 71, the step changes. The look climbs on the dolly and the field is stretched. They enter in game the pressures and the international interest, the oil, the complex composition of the iraqui society, with religious his facetings, ethnic, tribal, of type. The analysis after it "chronicle" is not alone journalistic matter of order. It is the choice of an angolazione. Giuliana Sgrena is at its comfort also in the spacious scenery and or rather, neighbor gives back it more, human and, to the same time, more wretched. At least for certain figures, protagonists downgraded, just, to appear: Ahmed Chalabi, the bancarottiere on that the united States had aimed to drive the new one Iraq americanizzato; Paul Bremer, the proconsole to the head of the Coalition provisional authority; Moqtada to the Sadr, Saddam Hussein, Alì to the Sistani, the large ayatollah of Najaf. Even George W. Bush, apparent first actor of the drama, is banished on the background. The key that Giuliana chooses is that of the forces and of the deep motions of the iraqui society. That they reflect on the politics, but they surpass it and, in some cases, they remove them sense. Better, they show its shortsightedness, thick opportunistica. So the journey in the complexity of the world sciita, to which a lot of pages, or the delicate game between the ethnicities are dedicated and the religions that superimpose and interweave, when do not fight themselves, make come in mind, for contrast, the comments cut with the hatchet of the propaganda from the governments that participate in the occupation.


http://www.carta.org/articoli/narrazioni/narrazioni04/27mangini.htm

[alittlelark]

33. Another awesome post, and message, Minstrel.

I love seeing you here. You point out the elephants in the rooms...... (taking off rose-colored glasses).

[LibertyorDeath]

34. Great Post !

" Sgrena's car, the US claims, is now "lost," and cannot be inspected."

Would all the "doubters from the past couple of days please jump in on this thread I would like to stick this quote up your


" Sgrena's car, the US claims, is now "lost," and cannot be inspected."

[Frederik]

35. Great post as always,

Minstrel Boy. It will be interesting to see what repercussions this will have in Italy. My 2 cents is they'll have to pull their troops out like the Spanish. My what a glorious coalition of the willing BushCo will be left with.

As regards the incident, here's a crazy thought. What if, by a stretch of the imagination, the assassins didn't fail in their mission? What if they got the guy they were after? There are indications he may have been hit by a well-directed sniper shot. He was a member of the Italian intelligence community (don't remember the name of the agency) which is known to be close to the CIA going back to operation Gladio and all that. The fake Iraq-Niger "Yellow Cake" report came from Italian intelligence, right? There have been rumours of a CIA "conspiracy" against this administration, which after all is busy transferring the CIA's missions to the Pentagon and purging the CIA of opposition. There's a theory (pure speculation I believe) that the CIA in cooperation with Italian intelligence forged the document to fool the admin. and then use it against them in a possible impeachment later (I don't really believe this...)

More to the point perhaps, the only information I have found on the Italian agent's professional life is that he was a skilled negotiator. He may quite likely have been involved in the successful resolution of the last Italian hostage crisis too, which also probably involved ransom being payd. And we know this kind of activity is extremely unpopular with the Americans. It was even cited by Sgrena herself as a possible reason why they would target her/him.

That aside, given the nature of her reporting, and the history of targetting reporters, I find it much more plausible that Sgrena was the intended target, if it was indeed more than an accident (which is starting to look pretty clear to me). But it can't hurt speculating.

[Karenina]

37. A single shot

to the temple. :think: :freak: :think:

[seemslikeadream]

36. The Manifest : freed the peace video

Giuliana
Kidnapped to Baghdad Giuliana Sgrena, envoy de The Manifest



The images released from Giuliana Sgrena during a visit to the children iracheni in the hospital of Hilla, to Babylon

...


Wednesday 16, to the 12, the Associated Press Television has diffused a video with an appeal of Giuliana Sgrena.
The journalist, become thin and tried, wears a green T-shirt and speaks in Italian and French. To its flank, one written, presumablly "Muhjaheddin without frontiers". Giuliana addresses to the Pier companion Scholars, to the family, "to the persons who have fought against the occupation and to all the Italian people". "I ask Pier - Giuliana Sgrena says - my husband: it helps me; only you can help me until in bottom asking the withdrawal for the troops. I count on you. My hope is alone in you. All the Italian people must help me, all those who have been with me in these fights must help me: my life depends on you. Fairies pressures on the government. This people do not want occupation, do not want troops, do not want foreign. You to me help to save to me. I have always fought with you. I ask the Italian government, the contrary Italian people to the occupation, I ask my husband, I pray to you, you help me - the Sgrena continues -. You must make all what you can in order to put aim to the occupation. Account on you, you can help me. Nobody would have to come in Iraq in this moment, neanche the journalists, nobody ".

We collect its appeal
Difficult to write sensate things, or also to only say them, after to have seen Giuliana.
Deprived of hope, she. And also we that we have seen it and felt. And also Pier, that we embrace with all the affection and the friendship of which we are able, with to the friends and colleagues of The Manifest.
Easy of forehead to its tears to feel itself impotent.
But mistaken. Because we are not impotent.
We can make, and we can make a lot.
For Giuliana, and in order to make to end that slaughter house that someone has the courage to call new democracy irachena. In order to make to end the slaughter houses that they are in the greater part of the world.
We do not have to give straight to who says that it cannot be made null. That we do not have voice. We have some of voice. And if they are all entirety become powerful voices, than they cannot not be listened.
We can make. More. We must make.
Because not more important of the human life is null. Of the life of Giuliana like of that one of the million persons who suffer the forgotten wars or less in the world.
And too much often lasciamo that who commands to face feint not to know it.
And too much often we plug eyes and orecchie in order not to see and not to feel that in our name, because is in our name that makes it, they, indisturbati, kills.
Maso Notarianni


The produced video gives
The Manifest : freed the peace .

The video, introduced tuesday and transmitted also from the Arabic televisions, tells Giuliana, its job, its passion for the Iraq and the iracheni.

The seizure has happened in the pressed ones of the mosque of to the Kastl, in the zone of the university, where Giuliana had oed in order to realize some interviews: "never it has not been a reporter that Luciana Castellina remains in hotel", as has remembered one of the fondatrici de The Manifest.

' ' Giuliana is a peace woman, loves the Iraq very and as all we are against the war ' '. The director de The Manifest , Gabriel Pole, has commented therefore the rapimento of the colleague Giuliana Sgrena. Like peace journalists, we make ours its words, and we appeal the kidnappers so that he is endured freed. Because to free Giuliana it means, also, to free one voice of the people iracheno.

Giuliana is the second kidnapped journalist in Iraq from the beginning of this year: Florence Aubenas , reporter French of Libération is passing 5 January 2005 to Baghdad, with to its interpreter iracheno Hussein Hanoun Al-Saadi . A hard blow for the French press, little more than a month from the release of Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, freed after three months and means of imprisonment.

Others two reporter still turn out passings in Iraq: Frédéric Nérac, cameramen French that a British one works for issuing, of which news from 22 March 2003 is not had, and cameramen iracheno a Isam Hadi Muhsin Al-Shumary, disappeared from 15 August 2004.

"One deep conoscitrice of the political, social and human of Iraq and above all studious truth of the Middle Eastern issues". E' with these words that the colleagues de The Manifest have described Giuliana Sgrena. It loves the Iraq, interests to them, studies it, tries to comprise it. And for this it has been several times, also before the war. The last time has left from Italy 23 January for the passage of deliveries with the colleague and friend Stefano Chiarini, that it has re-entered just today to Rome. For the electoral period, in fact, they have been with, working flank to flank.

Gotten passionate of its trade, Giuliana has been often also in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and still before she has been the envoy in Algeria of years Ninety, to the times of the maximum ferocity of the men of the Group Armed Muslim (Gia). Then it has worked from Egypt and the Somalia in the moment of the absolute chaos of the getlteman of the war.

Years of life in the heart of the Islam, years of reflections and taken of conscience of the fondamentalismo that has it capacity to the conviction that the political-military plan that of it achieves wheels around to the condition of the women. Giuliana Sgrena has always supported that the true mail in game of the crash with the Islam is the emancipation of the women, is the possibility of one mixed society. Here the feracious segregation of the Talebani afghani, tells you from she in "To the school of the Taleban", (manifestolibri, 2002), or the steps behind of the women irachene, described in "the Iraq forehead. Per diem of one permanent war "(manifestolibri, 2004).

PeaceReporter
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.peacereporter.net/dettaglio_articolo.php%3Fidc%3D16%26idart%3D1258&prev=/search%3Fq%3DGiuliana%2BSgrena%2BIl%2Bfronte%2BIraq%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG

[Jandar]

39. Perhaps the shooting transpired exactly as planned...

and the intent was not to silence a somewhat obscure journalist; but rather to set an example for countries willing to negotiate with forces allied against the United States. The one fatality was killed with one round to the temple, if the reports are correct. The rest could just be camouflage.

[Junkdrawer]

41. Minstrel, all indications are that the current nightmare has its roots...

in the late 70s when the reaction to Vietnam and Nixon was the election of Jimmy Carter, the election of a large number of fresh faced "Watergate Babies" to Congress, and the first-ever look into the inner-workings of the CIA (e.g. the Church Committee).

At that time:

1.) The Moral Majority was born.
2.) NCPAC successfully targeted Church, McGovern and a host of other liberal leaders.
3.) The Urosevitch Brothers were funded to start what would later become ES&S Vote and Diebold Election Systems.
4.) Ronald Reagan set the pattern for "feel good", "empty suit", "impeachment proof" presidential candidates.

The First Wave of Right Wing Reactionaries (1980->1992) were held back to some extent by a moderately active press. Through buyouts and intimidation, this was corrected and the Second Wave (2000->???) is well underway.

[ret5hd]

42. you just made a light go off in my head...

something that is now so obvious (in my own mind)...
something that has bothered me for a long time re: moral majority:
WHY WHY WHY?
why do they exist? what is falwells, robertsons, etc goal, other than personal power? why do they focus on the beauty of wealth, capitalism, the status quo of the political system, a system that is antithetical to the religion they espouse? they are among the most evil destructive people on the planet.

they are a cia funded (or other govt agency) op.

[Junkdrawer]

43. Well, as a pseudo grassroots entity, their obnoxious nature...

makes them stand out.

I mean, if you were in a room full of 100 people, and 15 to 20 were "Fundamentalist Christians", you could be convinced that the majority of the room was Fundamentalist Christian.

Genius when you think about it.