Giulani Sgrena; A Different Version
Reports of the shooting of Italian journalist Giulani Sgrena by US forces in Iraq last month had some features in common. We read and heard from virtually all sources that the car she was riding in was shot by American troops, who believed they were acting in self-defense, when it inexplicably tried to run a marked US checkpoint.
Naomi Klein, who interviewed Sgrena in a hospital in Rome late last month tells a different story. In an interview with Amy Goodman, Klein relays the story she got from Sgrena, a story drastically at odds with the commonly accepted version. Sgrena told Klein that while she will not say that the attack on the car was intentional, she has questions about the attack on her car which the US is not providing answers to.
Although most reports said her car was on the road to the airport, Sgrena says she was on an entirely different road; a secured road that can be entered only through the green zone and that is open only to ambassadors and top military officials. Sgrena also says it was not soldiers at a checkpoint that fired on her vehicle. Her car was fired on by a lone tank parked by the side of the road. Finally, and maybe most significantly, the bullet that wounded her (passing through her and killing Nicola Calipari, the security agent who had rescued her) struck her from behind. When fired upon, her car was not approaching the tank but driving away from it. Whatever the reason for firing on her car, self-defense would seem to be ruled out.
As Ms. Sgrena writes for a "communist" newspaper, anything she says that runs counter to the official version in this country is easily discounted, if not just ignored, by the US press (with its notorious liberal bias). And we know that the US Army would never just make stuff up to make itself look good. We can expect the truth about this incident to come out at about the same time that we get to see the missing 28 pages dealing with Saudi involvement with 9/11, when we hear the truth about the Plame Affair, when we find the WMD, yadda, yadda, yadda...
Naomi Klein, who interviewed Sgrena in a hospital in Rome late last month tells a different story. In an interview with Amy Goodman, Klein relays the story she got from Sgrena, a story drastically at odds with the commonly accepted version. Sgrena told Klein that while she will not say that the attack on the car was intentional, she has questions about the attack on her car which the US is not providing answers to.
Although most reports said her car was on the road to the airport, Sgrena says she was on an entirely different road; a secured road that can be entered only through the green zone and that is open only to ambassadors and top military officials. Sgrena also says it was not soldiers at a checkpoint that fired on her vehicle. Her car was fired on by a lone tank parked by the side of the road. Finally, and maybe most significantly, the bullet that wounded her (passing through her and killing Nicola Calipari, the security agent who had rescued her) struck her from behind. When fired upon, her car was not approaching the tank but driving away from it. Whatever the reason for firing on her car, self-defense would seem to be ruled out.
As Ms. Sgrena writes for a "communist" newspaper, anything she says that runs counter to the official version in this country is easily discounted, if not just ignored, by the US press (with its notorious liberal bias). And we know that the US Army would never just make stuff up to make itself look good. We can expect the truth about this incident to come out at about the same time that we get to see the missing 28 pages dealing with Saudi involvement with 9/11, when we hear the truth about the Plame Affair, when we find the WMD, yadda, yadda, yadda...
posted by Stephen Green at 9:15 PM
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