Was Giuliana Sgrena targeted for assassination?

Just wanted to get a sense of DU on this one...

The US is extremely upset they failed.

It's either a botched assasination, or, the soldiers were reckless, trigger-happy, with bad aim, and were too incompetent to shoot out the engine without hitting passengers. Hmmm...

>It's either a botched assasinatio

So botched, in fact, that they actually rendered medical assistance rather than shooting her in the head.

With respect to the latter part of your statement, I suggest you read some of the many accounts in the press during the early part of the occupation (when killing of civilians was still interesting to the US media) where one or more passengers in a car survived US attacks on the vehicle. It's especially telling if you look at the pictures of some of these vehicles. It's difficult to believe that anyone survived.

Why would they wound her and then take her to the hospital for treatment?

They couldn't start shooting wounded people in front of witnesses.

Weren't you the person who posted the fake car photo, too?

Hmmm.

Do you know what witnesses were there and when? If the U.S. Military opened fire on a vehicle with the intent to kill everyone in it, they would have done it. They wouldn't start and then stop in the middle of it and send their intended victim to the hospital. The only explanation they need is that the vehicle and the people inside were a percieved threat.

As to your other implication, I did not post the photo of that vehicle, I saw that on another thread posted by someone else on an LBN thread and copied it over to your thread. Neither I nor the original poster knew at the time it was bogus. You might want to consult your crystal ball a little closer Miss Clio - I don't appreciate your insinuation.

According to this poll, at this time, 39% of the people in DU don't believe it - are you going to accuse all of them also?

It is Clio, as in the muse of history, not Cleo.

There was a plane less than half a mile away, with Italian troops waiting for Sgrena. There was no way more shots could be fired after the checkpoint accident was bungled.

And she says she wasn't given medical treatment for 20 minutes.

Those who don't believe it and those smart enough to want more details total 49% right now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/worhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4333839.stm

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said the car carrying an Italian agent killed by US fire had stopped as soon as it was signalled."

The prime minister said the US military had authorised the Italian journey to the airport.

An agent travelling in the car with Mr Calipari had given an account of events which conflicted with the version given by the US military, he added."

Will our your local news cover this? I doubt it!



Totals 67% right now.

You think a poll with 143 respondents proves something?

Not the tens of thousands of other worms who say, "Aw, fuck it, who cares?"

I usually don't count the worms, I push them aside as they are good for my garden. (disclaimer: this is a purely educational gardening statement, not to be misconstrued as as a subversive statement with a hidden meaning)

Why is it that people can't handle it if someone has a contrary opinion? Do you honestly think that the hostile responses I am getting from you are going to change my mind? Does it make you feel better to try to belittle me because we have different opinions?

At this time, I have stated what I belive, if there comes to be any hard verifiable evidence to the contrary, I will consider it. In the mean time, you and your friend have proven yourselves worthy of my ignore list.

onto this conspiracy theory wagon.

Why do so many of those "conspiracy theories" ultimately turn out to be nothing of the kind?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3246030

I would expect this out of a Freeper, not someone who is supposed to be on the same side.

I certainly don't think you are a Freeper.

If anything you have made rude remarks to posters and tried to sell fuzzy math to make a point.

And not a U.S. gov't one either. :eyes:

:kick:

:kick:

I wish I had a snapshot yesterday...

would have won hands down...

and when we hear from those who were given the order to shoot.

As long as it makes * look bad. In any murder case a motive has to be established. Why would the US bother to kill the reporter? What possible reason could they have (I know, this question is exactly what the tinfoil hat brigade has been waiting for)? She was a reporter for a far-left communist paper, little she said was going to be taken seriously (unless somehow she was put onto the international spotlight!) and if she were to die another just like her would take her place. What would anyone possibly have to gain?

Friendly fire accidents happen all the time. I believe a Bulgarian soldier was killed the same day in a friendly fire incident.

Here are two words that a lot of people on this website hate: Occum's Razor. What's more likely a conspiracy to murder allies or an unfortunate accident, but one that occurs probably daily in the course of war?

Your casual attitude is quite repellent.

"Hey, it's a War--shit happens all the time!" It's an illegal war. Even if it were not, our side has broken the "rules" of war numerous times. Too many innocent Iraqis--& too many journalists--have died. The history of our involvement in Iraq does not lead one to trust Bush & pals.

And thanks for pointing out she is a reporter for a "far-left communist paper". Are you implying this was this a publicity stunt? The agent who died was well-respected in Italy. At least, one can hope that Berlusconi will do as his people wish.

My attitude isn't that casual or repellent. Legal or illegal, war is war. As far as the rules of war go, I'd guess that despite Abu Ghraib, this is about as clean as war gets (with maybe the exception of the First Gulf War). Not to defend war or anything, but it's usually much much nastier, even in cases like WWII.

All I meant by mentioning the reporter's affiliation was to point that it was hardly the New York Times or the Washington Post or Le Monde or whatever. She wasn't going to be a voice that could be heard on the international stage (at least until she was almost killed), and thus I don't think there's any reason the US would want to bother killing her.

We did have a reason for fighting WWII--we were attacked.

I don't know whether the US tried to kill her but her political party does not excuse the attack.

The point is that an italian communist isn't going to be taken seriously as a journalist in the US. Thus, the US has no motivation to harm her.

Just in case you missed it:

You are mistaken about the reporter's professional affiliation. The German weekly "Die Zeit" for which she writes is in fact very similar to all these papers you mention except that it is a weekly. Very much like the Guardian-affiliated Observer in Britain, or Nouvel Observateur in France.

I don't know Il Manifesto, but from what I heard it fits quite well into this mold, BTW. It is not some marginal rag as you seem to believe.

See also posts 42 and 47.

Now, we have the mainline US story of Sgrena's "running a checkpoint at a high rate of speed" morphing into "US soldiers set up a hasty checkpoint to protect Negroponte, and well, maybe they didn't use the proper amount of lighting".


http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050307-051134-8568r.htm

what she says is taken seriously (it is in Europe, but probably not in the US), it should serve as a warning to others, like all the other targetted journalists do. And Calipari was negotiating hostages for ransom (and not just Sgrena, he had done so with at least two others), which is very unpopular with the Americans.

Occam's razor: the simplest explanation taking all the facts and circumstances into consideration. Among these, be sure not to forget that the car travelled at a speed of no more than 25 mph, that they had the lights on in inside the car, that the American authorities in Bagdad had been informed of the operation by Calipari personally the same day, and that the shots came without warning. All of which has been confirmed by foreign minister Gianfranco Fini.

She was a reporter who had repeatedly written stories about illegal actions of US forces in Iraq. How could the troops would not be aware of a high profile hostage release, especially with a plane and officials waiting for them at the airport? And where is the car? Why they can't produce the car to verify their story? If you really want to apply Occam's Razor, then a conspiracy is actually the simpler solution, as opposed to the number of screwups that all would have to happen for this to have been an accident.

>How could the troops would not be aware of a high profile hostage
>release

Honestly, there's no way you can know whether they knew or not (at least right now)

> Why they can't produce the car to verify their story?

What part of the story does the car verify?

>a conspiracy is actually the simpler solution, as opposed to the number
> of screwups that all would have to happen for this to have been an
>accident.

No, the only screw-up that has to occur is for the US troops to foolishly start shooting at the car without much of a good reason. Unfortunatly, this happens quite regularly.

-How could the troops would not be aware of a high profile hostage release, especially with a plane and officials waiting for them at the airport?

Have you been in the army? Since when are all units successfully kept up to date on the movements of civilians? We can't even successfully disseminate knowledge of enemy OR friendly positions on a consistent basis.

-Why they can't produce the car to verify their story?

Because it may have embarassing evidence about how badly some of our armed forces are doing their job--i.e. shooting first and asking questions later. Can you say international incident? Damning evidence in the car isn't limited to an assassination attempt.

Answers to your questions showing this as an assassination attempt are anything but simple. Mine are very simple, and don't lead one to believe it was an attempt to assassinate this reporter.

with all the facts, starts drawing conclusions. I guess it does make it easy to come up with "simple answers" under those circumstances.

The car has apparently been located--in Italy. There are several threads about it even as we speak. And it's very odd that despite the Pentagon's original story that "10 or 20 bullets" were fired into the engine block, none of that damage is evident in the photos.

They could be lying for any number of reasons, the one that seems most likely to me being to cover up gross incompetence that would cause an international incident. I fail to see how the Pentagon lying about something is conclusive evidence that this is an assassination attempt.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3245163

I think when you put together all the lies about this incident, including the fact that the photos show that the car was fired upon from the side, and not as it was "speeding towards a checkpoint" and all the other bullshit we first heard, that it becomes something more sinister than mere incompetence.

It's not as if these Bushistas weren't vindictive as hell, and dozens of journalists haven't already died--but none from Fox, of course.

(typo edit)

Rather than just to wreck the engine block, but was this an orchestrated assassination attempt from on high? I just don't see it. The lies from the Pentagon and their keeping the car out of sight seem consistent with a coverup of badly trained/commanded US soldiers doing nasty things they're not supposed to officially do. I don't find the evidence to be consistent with an organized plot coming from high up to kill this specific woman. In other words, I don't buy the Pentagon line, but I don't see how the Pentagon lying about this and trying to cover it up must lead to an assassination attempt--there seem to be more likely scenarios that would be just as important for them to cover up.

Perhaps he was in fact the main target--some here have made plausible arguments for that scenario.

And "unfortunate accident" is such a convenient explanation that can cover a multitude of intentional sins.


(sp edit)

"She was a reporter for a far-left communist paper, little she said was going to be taken seriously (unless somehow she was put onto the international spotlight!)"

That insinuates that she is downrighty lying. I do not believe this. You're wrong in the following: "She was a reporter for a far-left communist paper, little she said was to be taken seriously". "Il Manifesto" has its readers in a country where it is perfectly normal for communists to sit in parliament and often even in government. Sgrena is well respected. Don't get Italy mixed up with the US.

Also "far-left" communist is - ahem - superflous.

---------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to the Hague!

The phrases ...

"little she said was going to be taken seriously"
-and-
"little she said was to be taken seriously"

... mean two completely different things.

enough rope to hang themselves, they will fully betray their ethnocentrism and other irrational and ugly prejudices.

- the length to which some people go to defend their "homeland".

You may be right in that Sgrena's reporting is not taken notice of in the US. But whatever her political affiliation may actually be - she is not only a reporter for what you label a "far-left communist paper" in Italy (the Italian communists are in fact social-democrats for quite a while now), but also a regular contributor to the German weekly "Die Zeit"

http://www.zeit.de

which is a very well established, very high-brow and serious newspaper with a large readership among Germany's moderate liberals, as respected as the NYT in the US, for what it's worth. The editors are top journalists and among the three publishers is the rather conservative former social-democrat Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and a former social-democrat Federal Minister for Culture, Michael Naumann.

If someone wanted to get the message out to journalists critical of the Iraq war that they are considered enemies and liable to get shot, she was a perfect target.

See also "the answer of the US army" (to specific questions of a Zeit reporter) here:

http://blogg.zeit.de/bittner/eintrag.php?id=147

The media have been consistent in labelling her "communist" or "left-wing", and never mentioning that she writes for Die Zeit, too. She is a very well-respected journalist, one of the few (and increasingly scarce) independent, non-embedded journalists reporting from Iraq.

Which, incidentally, is just the type of journalist that has been targetted repeatedly by US forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq. With this precedent, it is only healthy to be extremely suspicious when such a journalist once again falls victim to an attack by US forces.

Add to that the highly conspicuous circumstances surrounding the incident and the glaring discrepancy between the Pentagon's blatantly mendacious account and the account presented by Italy's foreign minister in front of the Parliament - and there is reason to suspect that she was in fact targetted on purpose. Though Calipari, who was killed by a shot through the temple, may also have been the target, if it was indeed more than a clusterf**k.

If she was the target, it woudn't necessarily matter much if she lived or not. The point would be to discourage independent journalists, which appears to have been a consistently applied policy throughout the "War on Terror". Nothing is of course certain at this point, and noone can claim to know for sure, but the various arguments that have been presented to somehow prove that she couldn't possibly have been targetted on purpose - she would have been dead, why didn't they shoot her with a cannon, what about the tsunami etc. - are not convincing in the least.

...#1 it wouldn't have gone down like it did.

#2 she'd be dead.

Why would they risk it to kill some journalist for a communist newspaper? What's the point?

:shrug:

Heyo

Remember how we were told over and over when this happened that she was killed by the US because she had "information" that wasn't supposed to get out? Well, where's the information?

I'd think long and carefully before I were blurting it out. To me that's no argument.

-------------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

Given her take and coverage on the US involvement in the war, I would imagine a targeted attempt on her life would make her more convinced to get the information out as soon as possible and expose whatever she had dug up.

In a couple of weeks she'll be off the radar just like any other journalist who was shot or shot at. If she has any information she'll be giving it up before the media forgets about her.

But a lot of other people have. All she's contributed is some gibberish about the possibility that it was done because the US doesn't like the Italian policy of negotiating with the insurgents.

and likely "wet".

Since the US supposedly knew the car was coming I imagine that they would have known the exact route the car was going to take after a certain point.

How much simpler would it have been to set up an assasination while she was in route and in the middle of nowhere vs. at a road block where questions of the very nature that are now being asked would have arisen.

A roadside bomb, an obstruction in the road followed by a sniper bullet or RPG, etc., would have been more likely to be be the methods of an actual deliberate hit.

Given the journalist's prior views on this war I don't doubt that she would give an account that doesn't put any blame on her party's actions. Since the whole story is as yet unknown, I don't see any reason to buy her story as unquestioned gospel any more than I would the US's side of things.

As others have said, the fact that she's still alive probably blows the targeted/deliberate attempt on her life out of the water but that won't stop anyone from hypothesizing their own theories.

normal to fuck up at a normal checkpoint but it's not possible to fuck up an assassination. I don't see the logic.

----------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

That's right, the all-powerful, all-perfect U.S. military ALWAYS GETS ITS MAN.

If they want you dead, you might as well just ask for the final rites right now, because you are history, fool.

Just ask Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and hey, even Pancho Villa.

but they didn't bother to put one bullet each into the survivors' heads and you still say this was a deliberate hit?

Right......

There was a plane, with Italian troops, less than half a mile away, who were probably running toward the scene.

There were probably onlookers, after the shooting stopped.

And you think that soomeone is then going to put a bullet in the head of the wounded people?

Right.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

this temporary road block fairly close to the Baghdad Airport. Looks like John Negroponte fucked up.

Check out the lastest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4333839.stm

Was the fatal attack on the convoy carrying Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, an unfortunate accident?


Yes :
 38%

No :
 51%

Unsure :
 11%

Number of pollers : 31306

:eyes:

Apples and oranges.

with the wrong kind of bullet holes in her
questions might have been asked
and suspicions confirmed.

LOOK AT THE RECORD: U.S. HAS TARGETED CIVILIANS BEFORE
http://www.iacenter.org/nowar_record.htm

Everything is NOT a conspiracy.

Bush's diabolical brand of genius is only clever enough to plan and execute 9/11 and the tsunami without a single hitch or mistake--he will fuck up while trying to kill a lone Italian woman in a crappy sedan surrounded by US soldiers.

There are not enough eye rolling smileys for this logic.

Why would you try to link this story to the tsunami nuttiness?

You're right, that logic is wacked.

But you're the only one professing that particular logic, so that is of little consequence.

"One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything."

Until I see VERY credible evidence that this was anything other than a routine clusterfuck, I will not accept that this was an assasination.