Update on the Giuliana Sgrena story
Wed Mar 09, 2005 at 07:02:03 PM PDT
Right now, it's basically the word of the US military versus the word of the Italian government on what happened. From
CNN:
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says the intelligence agent shot dead by the U.S. military told them he would be escorting a newly released hostage to the airport -- contrary to U.S. claims.
Another Italian attache, who was at the Baghdad airport, also told U.S. military personnel the car carrying agent Nicola Calipari and journalist Giuliana Sgrena was on its way to the airport March 4 before the shooting occurred, Berlusconi told the Italian senate on Wednesday.
Gen Casey in his latest
press conference:
Q ...[A]re there any preliminary indications that the Italians had communicated with the United States and the U.S. military that she had been freed and was on her way to the airport?
GEN. CASEY: Yeah. I have no preliminary indication that that's true.
We can't even agree on the simplest facts:
Italian military officials said two other agents were wounded, but U.S. officials said it was only one.
One thing I found interesting was that according to
Sgrena:
Sgrena told colleagues the vehicle was not travelling fast and had already passed several checkpoints on its way to the airport.
If what she said is true, I would think that the Italians told the Americans at the prior check point who they were, that they had a recovered hostage and that they were heading to the airport. I don't see them getting past the other check points otherwise. Did the checkpoints not notify anyone?
Now, the Italians apparently had a plane at the airport waiting to take the team back to Italy:
Q General, the plane was at the airport. So someone knew that the Italians were coming to the airport to spirit out this -- the journalist and the security agents. Who was aware that that plane was at the airport?
GEN. CASEY: I think that's something that the investigation will sort out here.
Q You don't know who communicated that the --
GEN. CASEY: As I said, I don't. I don't have that information.
Q So you basically have no information at all about what happened here, about the airplane being at the airport, about the route?
GEN. CASEY: I have some information about what took place at the checkpoint.
The next curious thing is the picture of the car:
Here is the initial press statement from the military:
U.S. troops "attempted to warn the driver to stop by hand and arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car," the statement said. "When the driver didn't stop, the soldiers shot into the engine block, which stopped the vehicle."
I can't see any damage to the grill of the car. Now, the pictures show only the driver side of the car, but most of the grill looks to be in view. The
Jawa Report has more pictures. It looks like the photographer took pictures of where there was damage and didn't take any pictures of the grill area. It looks like what brought the car to a stop was a flat tire.
I find it interesting the right half of the blogosphere are apparently covering this story much more than the that left half. And they are accepting the military line completely and they are using inconsistancies in Sgrena's public statements to "prove" the US military is correct. From the earlier Guardian story:
The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle.
I agree that the car doesn't have much apparent bullet damage and the 300 to 400 figure appears to be a wild overstatement, but I don't think I could accurately estimate the number of shots that came at me when I was suddenly fired upon. An example of the explaining away from the
The Jawa Report:
A single bullet hit one of the three passengers making it all but certain that the US version of events is accurate and that Sgrena is intentionally lying to make the US look bad.
Three or four people were wounded, so the Jawa Report apparently thinks that one bullet struck an agent in the front seat, struck Nicola Calipari in the head and then struck Sgrena. His analysis looks brilliant compared to
Jack Lewis:
Was the bullet analyzed to see if actually came from the Americans? Could Calipari have been set up, and murdered by Sgrena's own people in order to stage a scene that would embarrass America? The other two occupants of the car might have information -- but where are they? Remember, there is still quite a bit of speculation about whether she was even kidnapped in the first place.
But the right wing doesn't address what I think is the major weakness of the US military's story - why would a highly-trained Italian secret service agent in a car with two other highly-trained secret service agents approach a check point at high speed and then ignored hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and then warning shots? You can call Sgrena stupid, a traitor, etc, but the story is about an Italian secret service agent being killed and one or two more injured while Sgrena is in the back seat of the car. Remember that "A senior U.S. military official tells ABC News he believes the investigation into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops in Iraq will ultimately prove the officer's car was traveling in excess of 100 mph." A car traveling at 100 mph covers 146 feet per second and would take at least 530 ft (or nearly two football fields) to come to a complete stop. Assuming 15 seconds from when the check point saw the car to when they started shooting in earnest, that means on a rainy night they started signalling to the car when it was over a half mile away. I don't know what happened, but the US military's story doesn't ring true to me.
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