The story of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and her harrowing assult by a rain of American bullets in Iraq, is simply too ridiculous to be real…but it is.
Having been freed as a hostage, she was in a car, with the Italian agent who had negotiated her release, and on her way to the airport.
U.S.-led multi-national forces said the car carrying Sgrena was speeding and that soldiers fired warning shots in an attempt to stop it, before opening fire.
Ms. Sgrena has a different account:
She said she was in the car with the agents and heading for the airport, which was less than a mile away, when they approached the checkpoint.
“I only remember fire,” she wrote. “At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us.” The driver began yelling that they were Italians, she wrote, and “Nicola Calipari threw himself on me to protect me and immediately, I repeat, immediately, I heard his last breath as he was dying on me.”
She said she remembered something her captors had told her: “They declared that they were committed to the fullest to freeing me, but I had to be careful — ‘the Americans don’t want you to go back.’” At the time, she said, “I considered those words superfluous and ideological. At that moment they risked acquiring the flavor of the bitterest of truths.”
The flavour of the bitterest truth — a statement that seems to apply more and more to the Iraqi occupation.
Was it a horrible accident? I’m not so sure. The more I read about this, the more I wonder just how much control the United States has over its troops, and how much leeway is being given to them on the road. You would think that rushing freed hostages to the airport and getting them the hell out of the country would be quite common these days…
There’s a bad smell coming from all this…and it’s cost the life of a secret service agent who not only negotiated the release of an innocent women, but covered her body with his own, in order to protect her from the gunfire…and without hestiation.
He died courageously…but I’m pretty convinced he also died for a futile cause, from the guns of frightened, paranoid, exhausted troops. Someone needs to pay for this mistake.
UPDATE at 7:41pm
I’ve just read the translation of Ms. Sgrena’s own account of her captivity and her traumatic near-death experience trying to get to the airport and freedom. It’s sad, chilling reading, but it’s also upfront about her feelings on the American attack: “Our car was driving slowly,” and “the Americans fired without motive,” she says. That’s pretty blunt, in my opinion. It’s also something I’m sure the Americans don’t want to hear…but I’m sick of their attempts to fudge information from Iraq. I’m also surprised CNN would even go to such lengths to shed light on this story…
Ms. Sgrena also has a rather mournful epitaph to the entire situation:
The worse collateral effect, the war that kills communication was falling on me. To me, I who had risked everything, challenging the Italian government who didn’t want journalists to reach Iraq and the Americans who don’t want our work to be witnessed of what really became of that country with the war and notwithstanding that which they call elections.
(SIGH)
This is all going to come to a catastrophic end…
