Botched Sgrena Hit Does Not Bode Well for Bush and Berlusconi
Kurt Nimmo
March 06, 2005
[w/ update M7, '05]
Sgrena Shooting: Hit or Message Sent?

Newspapers across the United States are publishing and posting the same story by Frances D?Emilio on the shooting of Giuliana Sgrena and the murder of Nicola Calipari.

The story is entitled ?Story of Italian Hostage?s Release Unclear? and it is divided between the ?circumstances? surrounding Sgrena?s release and the ?friendly fire incident? that killed Calipari and wounded Sgrena. D?Emilio, however, left out a few important facts, as noted by Lew Rockwell:

?Despite the universal reprinting of Pentagon press releases by the US media?the Italian car carrying the hostage and her rescuers was speeding towards the checkpoint and refused to stop despite warning shots?the foreign press reports the truth. When the USG soldiers opened fire, the car was 700 yards from the airport and had passed all checkpoints. Giuliana Sgrena had helped expose Abu Graib and other US military crimes, including massacres in Fallujah, and she has much more to say. She is hated for not being embedded and FOXified, so they opened fire. One can never rule out a snafu?this is the government, after all?but the rest of the world sees it as an attempted hit.?

Consider the following posted on the Turkish Press site:

?The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming,? Pier Scolari [Sgrena?s companion] said on leaving Rome?s Celio military hospital where Sgrena is to undergo surgery following her return home. ?They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints? Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive,? he added.

Apparently, the Italians are not taking the incident lightly. According to a report posted on the Corriere della Sera site [news item in Italian], the Italian government is demanding the Department of Justice turn over the names of the soldiers involved in the attack. ?The shooting could rekindle anti-war sentiment in Italy, where public opinion opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq,? writes Christiano Corvino for SwissInfo. ?Italy?s center-left, which hopes to unseat Berlusconi next year in elections and to weaken his standing at local government polls next month, is campaigning on a platform of withdrawing.? Italian newspapers ?warned the government against a cover-up given Berlusconi?s cozy relationship with Washington,? Media 24 reported yesterday.

Predictably, the corporate media in the United States is in the process of downplaying the fallout from this incident, viewed by many Italians as an attempt to assassinate Giuliana Sgrena. ?About 100 demonstrators outside the U.S. Embassy in Rome blocked traffic and one banner read: ?USA, war criminals.? A few dozen communist demonstrators at the U.S. Consulate in Milan handed out leaflets reading, ?Shame on you, Bush,?? reports ABC News. In other words, just a few commies, no need to take note, move along.

?Ever since the kidnappings and beheadings of non-military personnel in Iraq began nearly 2 years ago, many observers, readers and analysts have asked why the Iraqi resistance would commit these crimes, knowing they would turn world opinion against them,? writes Les Blough of Axis of Logic. ?Many ask the same questions about the mass killings of Shiites with bombs. The Iraqi resistance has nothing to gain from these atrocities and the invader/occupiers have everything to gain in the propaganda war. We know that the CIA and Mossad have been very busy in Iraq but what kind of ?work? are they doing??

It is fair to say part of their ?work? is killing journalists determined to tell the truth about what is happening in Iraq.

?A senior correspondent for the Communist daily, Il Manifesto in Rome, the journalist [Sgrena] has been no friend of the US invasion and occupation,? writes Arab News. ?US troops have killed journalists before. Two cameramen, a Ukrainian and a Spaniard, were slain in April 2003 when a US shell was fired into the Palestine Hotel, a known base of international journalists opposite the Baghdad Sheraton. Earlier an Al-Jazeera correspondent was killed when the TV station's local office was struck by a US missile.?

And:

?When Sgrena was kidnapped on Feb.4 , other journalists were told by US officials that the event highlighted the danger of working outside their Green Zone-focused loop. There was also apparently grim satisfaction that a journalist who was so opposed to US policy should have become a victim of the insurgents. The conclusion of the sinister explanation must therefore be that the Americans were settling the score with a foreign commentator whose published views infuriated them.?

As Lew Rockwell notes above, all media not sufficiently ?FOXified? is considered a target by Rumsfeld?s Pentagon. Recall the ?firestorm? that erupted last month when Eason Jordan, head of CNN?s news division, ?told a panel at a World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that the American military had targeted journalists during operations in Iraq,? as Roderick Boyd wrote for the New York Sun. Jordan said ?he knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy,? according to Democrat Rep. Barney Frank. For his heresy, Jordan was forced to resign soon after making the allegations, even though he attempted to backpedal.

In all the coverage by the corporate media of the Sgrena story, one crucial element is conspicuously missing: on the day she was kidnapped Giuliana Sgrena had an appointment in a Baghdad Sunni mosque with refugees from Fallujah. ?During the attack on the city, eyewitnesses described horrific scenes that analysts have attributed to attacks with napalm, a poisonous cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel that has the capacity of melting human flesh and bones,? writes Joel Wendland. ?Inter Press Service reported eyewitness accounts describing bombs that created mushroom clouds and explosions that caused skin to burn even when water was thrown on it. Some eyewitnesses saw indiscriminate shooting and the use of tanks to drag dead bodies to mass graves.?

Giuliana Sgrena likely has a few stories to tell that will not bode well for Bush and his sock puppet, Silvio Berlusconi. Expect these stories to surface soon after Sgrena makes her recovery.