Sgrena, the 56-year-old correspondent of the communist daily Il Manifesto, told Italian investigators the US troops’ intense fire had been in no way justified by the speed of her car, ANSA news agency said.
“Our vehicle was running at normal speed which could not be misunderstood,” she said, rejecting US fears of a possible suicide attack.
“It wasn’t a checkpoint but a patrol which immediately opened fire after they trained their light on us,” Sgrena said.
The US military said Friday Sgrena’s convoy had ignored signals to stop, and that US soldiers had waved their hands and arms, flashed white lights and fired warning shots in a failed attempt to get the vehicle to stop.
But Sgrena told RaiNews24 television Saturday that a “hail of bullets” rained down on the car taking her to safety at Baghdad airport, along with three Italian intelligence officers, killing one of them.
“I was speaking to (officer) Nicola Calipari (…) when he leant on me, probably to protect me, and then collapsed and I realized he was dead,” said Sgrena, who was being questioned on Saturday by two Italian magistrates.
“They continued shooting and the driver couldn’t even explain that we were Italians. It was really horrible,” she added.
Il Manifesto chief editor Gabriele Polo branded the intelligence officer’s death a “murder”.
[…]
“The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming,” Pier Scolari said on leaving Celio hospital.“They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints.”
Friday’s shooting was heard by Berlusconi’s aides who were on the phone with one of the intelligence officers, said Scolari. “Then the US military silenced the cellphones,” he charged.
“Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive,” he added.
John Birch on the Radio
Today on the Weekend Interview Show (4 to 6 Eastern): In the first hour I’ll be speaking with William Norman Grigg, senior editor of The New American magazine about Russia, China, Just War, Cowboys, Yankees, and Neocons. More info here
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Update: Show’s over.
Stream Here
Download mp3 Here
Real War Heroes
Here’s an interesting site, gathering information on war resistors, IE. soldiers who refused orders, draft resistors etc., none of this “fighting for our freedom” crap;
We honor those soldiers who risked loss of liberty, economic deprivation, and social ostracism. Each of these men and women of the military have at some point refused orders in this immoral, illegal, unjustified war the United States is currently waging in Iraq, or the occupation in Afghanistan. They obeyed their conscience over illegal orders.
You asked for it, Ann
The State-worshipping warmonger known as Ann Coulter has struck again. Defending the White House from allegations that it’s policy of issuing ‘press passes’ is partisan, Coulter suggests that “that old Arab” Helen Thomas is allowed in. That wasn’t really a response to the charge, which, as I have noted, was of partisanship, IE. left vs. right. What does Thomas’s Lebanese descendancy have to do with … but never mind. All Coulter was trying to do was generate publicity for herself, to sell more garbage-er I mean books to glazed-eyed Fundies.
Coulter is to political commentary what Madonna is to music. Their real talents are in stirring up hypocritical outrage to sell … dare I call it music and literature?
Thomas’s credentials are infinitely superior to Coulter’s, of course, and the 84 year-old Thomas has Coulter beat in another way; physical attractiveness. What sort of a creature is Coulter anyway? I’ve studied her image, on TV and in pictures, and I’ve decided that she’s not human, or female in any sense that I know the terms. She makes Karen Carpenter look fat. If I saw Coulter standing nearby, I’d have to start looking for the mothership.
Rather than a human being, I think Coulter is a physical manifestation of the fear and hatred inspired by neoconservatism, worldwide. Perhaps if we ignore her, like a failed marketing slogan, she’ll go away. I will try to do so, from now on, but I can’t guarantee results.
Freed Italian hostage shot by US
Oops! The US military almost killed the freed hostage:
An Italian journalist was injured when a U.S. armoured vehicle mistakenly fired on her car after her release from captivity in Iraq, news reports said Friday. One Italian secret service agent was killed in the shooting, and another was injured, the reports said.
The Apcom and ANSA news agencies said that Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter for the communist daily Il Manifesto, was in a hospital in Iraq with a shoulder injury. The shooting occurred Friday at a roadblock while the car was heading to the airport, the reports said.
The editor of Il Manifesto, Gabriele Polo, said the secret service agent was killed when he threw himself over the freed hostage to protect her from U.S. fire, according to Apcom. He also said Sgrena was in the hospital but was not seriously injured.
The U.S. military press desk in Baghdad had no immediate comment on reports of the shooting and said it was looking into the matter.
You gotta watch out for those liberators in Iraq.
All the cedars of Lebanon …
I’d give all the cedars of Lebanon to know how the “opposition” and their American amen corner will spin the latest news from the investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri:
“Lebanon’s investigations show that ex-Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was almost certainly killed by a suicide car bomb, a judicial source close to the probe said on Friday. The source said results of the probe would be released next week. He expected them to show that a Muslim militant who had appeared in a video tape claiming responsibility for the attack was in the car that ripped through Hariri’s motorcade in Beirut on Feb. 14. ‘The attack happened when a car slowed up to allow Hariri’s motorcade to pass it. As the motorcade passed it, the car blew up,’ the source said. He said evidence came from a security camera at a nearby bank which caught parts of the incident. “
A “security camera,” eh? So, who are you going to believe — the transparently biased view of a “security camera,” which is obviously just part of an ongoing Syrian plot against Democracy and Goodness, or Walid Jumblatt, who thinks the U.S. bombed itself on 9/11
and also believes (along with the U.S. government, Charles Krauthammer, Glenn Reynolds, and all the Usual Suspects) that he was knocked off by the evil Syrians?
The story goes on to say that “Lebanon’s opposition and the international community have made revealing the identity of Hariri’s killers a key priority. ”
Yeah, well not anymore! Ever since the bomb went off, the Syrian “opposition” has been pushing a conspiracy theory that posits the existence of an underground bomb, which was (naturally!) planted by Syrian intelligence. Now they’ll start howling that this is all part of a “cover-up” — but how will they explain the DNA tests that point to the identity of the killer?:
“A previously unknown Islamist group said in a video aired a few hours after the bombing it had carried out a suicide attack against Hariri because he supported the Saudi government.
Lebanese security sources identified the man who read the statement as on the video as Ahmed Tayseer Abu Adas and authorities did DNA tests on the remains of a body found at the scene to establish they belonged to Abu Adas.”
So maybe there was something to the videotaped claim of responsibility by a “previously unknown” Al Qaeda-affiliated anti-Saudi group. Oh, but never mind all that: these are mere facts, which get in the way of “the revolution”! Move along — nothing to see here!
Syria didn’t kill Hariri. The Syrians may be brutes, but they aren’t dumb brutes. So who did?
Stay tuned ….