Italian Agent Killed by U.S. Had Negotiated Release of Previous Hostages

for everyone involved.

I feel for everyone including the soldiers.

THis did not have to happen. This war was and is unecessary. Not to mention illegal.

WASS

The "peace correspondent" as she is mostly referred to by her colleagues, Sgrena has been the quintessential anti-war activist, writer, and journalist throughout her long career. She was captured outside a mosque in Baghdad while waiting to interview Falluja refugees for a story on the impact of the raid on their lives. Like many female correspondents, Sgrena tended to focus on the effect of war on ordinary people rather than recount the battle stories.

<snip>

With so little information at hand, no one is saying that the Iraqi secret service is behind the latest kidnapping, but the nagging question as to who benefits from terrorising anti- occupation civilians persists.

Two recent developments are worth noting. Earlier in the year, Newsweek reported that the Pentagon is considering using the "Salvador Option" in reference to a counter-insurgency strategy of the 1980s which saw the CIA-train local secret forces to go after leftists insurgents and their sympathisers in the Central American country and which led to tens of thousands of deaths.

A few weeks ago, and of particular interest to Italy, researcher Daniele Ganser with the Centre for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich published a book on the NATO's Secret Armies after WWII. The research offers plenty of proof on how NATO and the secret services in various European countries collaborated in attacks on civilians that were blamed on left-wing groups. It was not till the early 1990s that a former Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti confirmed that the secret group, code- named Gladio, existed.

Ganser's book contains various documented confessions including this chilling statement by former Gladio member, a right-wing extremist who was convicted for his part in one fatal attack, "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security."
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/732/in2.htm

Pulled from your link...

<snip>
"You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

if they edited it, which i guess is reasonable, but still.. makes ya wonder just what else gets edited along the way and in other veins.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=a7c2bba2a605f040



Berlusconi calls in U.S. ambassador after Italian shot dead in Iraq
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Big News Network.com Friday 4th March, 2005

The U.S. has launched an investigation while Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has lashed out over an incident in Iraq on Friday.

A car carrying a former hostage, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and Italian intelligence officials, was driving to the Baghdad Airport when U.S. forces fired on the car, killing an intelligence agent, and wounding Sqrena.


more...

This is incredibly horrible!!!

From your article:

Sgrena also asked her partner, Pierre Scolari, to show pictures she had taken of Iraqi children being hit by cluster bombs.

As i posted in another thread, WHO BUT BUSH WOULD WANT TO HAVE SGRENA SILENCED? She was first silenced, disappeared, when she went to interview survivors of the fallujah massacre, and as your quote reports "she wanted to show pictures she had taken of iraqi children being hit by cluster bombs. So, who would want her silenced? The insurgents as the TBO reports? THAT HARDLY SEEMS CREDIBLE. WOULDN'T THE INSURGENTS WANT THE ENTIRE WORLD TO KNOW WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED IN FALLUJAH? and ... wouldn't the american intelligence, which BUSH CLAIMS has OSAMA BIN LADEN running and in hiding form HIS power, have known the sgrena had been freed, that the agent who had negotiated her freedom was travelling with her... and WHY would they fire on that car?

WHO AMONG US ARE GULLIBLE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT BUSH ISN'T CAPABLE OF USING THAT OLD "HALT THE OLD CAR THERE--BUT THEY DIDN'T STOP SO I HAD TO FIRE" excuse for silencing their TRUE INTENDED TARGET(S).

This was no accident and the american excuse smells like the old stinking SOB (SON OF BARBARA'S) THAT BUSH IS.

Tell me again? The US doesn't target anti-war journalists?

Giuliana is so lucky to still be alive. Now they won't be able to stop her from telling her story.

have her wound repaired...and I HOPE SHE DOES GET OUT ALIVE. AND I HOPE SHE DOES TELL HER STORY ... I will look for it on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman--she will probably be the only US news organization carrying her story.

she won't be safe until she is far away from amerikans.

with any of the above, still there's one thing I find slightly odd: if the "insurgents" who kidnapped her were indeed working for the US, then why did they release her just to have her shot by US soldiers? They could of course have been a criminal group who received money from Allawi/CIA/whoever to kidnap her and then accepted a ransom from the Italians to free her. Just speculation, but it's not beyond the realm of the possible.

But then they could just as well have been a criminal group acting on their own, ie not "insurgents" but kidnapping westerners for monetary gain. Thus they wouldn't give a damn if she was anti-war or not. She could still have been targetted deliberately at the chekpoint. But I'm just as inclined to think that it was an accident until we here more about the circumstances.

It IS odd though, that the journalists (and others, like Margaret Hassan) who are kidnapped and targeted are usually strongly opposed to the war and dedicated to expose its effects on the civilian population. But then, most journalists who are not embedded and actually leave Hotel Palestine - thereby exposing themselves to kidnapping and killing - tend to be critical to the war, how can they not be when they see what's really going on.

It will be interesting to hear what she has to sayabout it all.

I hope Italy has a mass demonstration about this outrage.

BUSH THAT WE DON'T STAND FOR THE MISCALCULATION AND WRONG INTUITION OF OUR AMERICAN ARMY.

Did we do this accidently on purpose?
Had the car already gone through the check point?--who was targetted

what kind of mad house is this!???????

so let's do the typical American thing and throw some cash their way:

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/archive/topic/113638-1.html

This stinks to high heaven!

We are supposed to believe that such skilled, experienced professionals (on a high-priority mission), just suddenly decided to RUN A U.S. ROADBLOCK?

These guys are real security PROS- if they were running a roadblock, it was because they had a damn good reason.
And if they WEREN'T, then our people are LYING about what happened.

Too bad for the US that some of them escaped alive.(inconveeeeenient!)
I can hardly wait to hear THEIR description of events!

if the occupying forces have a problem with communication. You would think the people at the checkpoint would be made aware of who the occupants of the car were.

This incident is absolutely shameful--I don't know how such an "accident" could have occured. I hope there will be some investigative reports, from Europe, if not the US that will shed a little more light on hwat the hell happened.

And that this was an intentional ambush by the US. This may get interesting?

Don

I can't wait until she has recovered and writes of the American atrocities she has witnessed. Including her almost assasination.

Berlusconi had the Colosseum in Rome lit up to welcome her home. This is how big a deal this lady is in Italy.




I can't wait to hear Bush and Rummie's responses to this incident.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/


Many of her articles are linked.