Remember Eason Jordan of CNN being fired because he suggested — not on air, not in print, but off-the-cuff at a speech — that US troops may have been targeting journalists? Well, recently released Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena didn’t hear the speech, but she’s got the same idea…
ROME – Left-wing journalist Giuliana Sgrena claimed American soldiers gave no warning before they opened fire and said Sunday she could not rule out that U.S. forces intentionally shot at the car carrying her to the Baghdad airport, wounding her and killing the Italian agent who had just won her freedom after a month in captivity.
The White House says it was all just a horrific accident. Sgrena doesn’t think their account jibes with the facts:
“The fact that the Americans don’t want negotiations to free the hostages is known. The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostage, everybody knows that. So I don’t see why I should rule out that I could have been the target.”
U.S. officials object to ransom payments or negotiation with kidnappers, claiming that only encourages further hostage-taking.
Perhaps it does, but they seem to be intent on taking hostages regardless of what we do. I wonder if it has more to do with us invading their country and killing their families and the desperate tactics of asymetrical warfare? Silly Italians, with their “let’s save the life of an innocent journalist” attitude. Don’t they realize there’s just going to be some “collateral damage” in the War on (Some Countries That Had Nothing To Do With 9/11 Or) Terror™?
The U.S. military has said the car Sgrena was riding in was speeding and Americans used hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and warning shots to get it to stop at the roadblock. …Sgrena said, “There was no bright light, no signal.” She also said the car was traveling at “regular speed.”
“I remember only fire. At that point a rain of fire and bullets came at us, forever silencing the happy voices from a few minutes earlier.”
She said the driver began shouting that they were Italian, then “Nicola Calipari dove on top of me to protect me and immediately, and I mean immediately, I felt his last breath as he died on me.”
Sgrena recounted her final moments before freedom: “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.'”
