There's One, Only!

The plot to assassinate a reporter?

I’ve been slightly keeping track of the whole mess with Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian reporter/hostage being wounded at a roadblock checkpoint, and an Italian Intelligence Officer, Nicola Calipari, being killed.

Sgrena is claiming that this was an intentional act by American forces. That it was an assassination attempt.

She’s quoted as saying:

"I believe, but it's only a hypothesis, that the happy ending to the negotiations must have been irksome. The Americans are against this type of operation. For them, war is war, human life doesn't count for much." "when they let me go, it was a difficult moment for me because they told me, `The Americans don't want you to return alive to Italy.'"

Of course many Americans believe this to be a load of tripe. I particularly like Blackfive’s comment on the matter:

She fails to understand that she and the other Italian agent survived. The shooting stopped when the car stopped being a threat. If the US (or the troops at the checkpoint for that matter) wanted her dead, the car would have been blown to bits and you would have needed the guys from CSI to identify the remains of the Italians.

The point Blackfive makes here, is that if American forces wanted her dead, she would be dead. There was no reason for the soldiers to stop shooting if they knew it was her and were targeting her. How can something that obvious be so hard for them to see?

There are many other problems with the theory that this was an intentional act, but to me it boils down to the fact that the soldiers stopped shooting. The Italians didn’t escape from an ambush, or turn around and run from the roadblock. The car was stopped, and then the firing stopped.

And then our soldiers administered medical treatment. Not exactly the behavior you would expect towards someone you intended to kill.

It’s a shame that a man died because of the mistakes that occurred, but saying that this was intentional is downright criminal.

Sorry for being serious. I’ll go back to inane postings later. But I had to put my feelings about this into words.

Posted by GEBIV at March 7, 2005 07:32 PM