U.S. Soldier Blames Kidnapped Journalist for Death of Italian Agent in Iraq

[stranger81]

The background from Democracy Now:

" U.S. soldier involved in the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq said he is not to blame for the agent's death. Last week an Italian court dismissed the absentia trial of Mario Lozano for the killing of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari. Lozano allegedly shot Calipari as he escorted the then-newly freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to the airport. In an interview with Reuters news agency, Lozano directly blamed Giuliana Sgrena, the kidnapped journalist, for what happened. Sgrena was in Iraq reporting for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto when she was kidnapped. Lozano criticized Sgrena for going to Iraq and reporting on the war."

And Lozano's side of the story, in his own words: "She went out there, she wanted to mingle with the terrorists and all that. Then she gets caught. Now we have to send, now we have to send good men to go after this one person that knows that she put herself in the situation. She knows that if she's going to go talk to terrorists, she knows there's a 99 percent chance she will get caught. So why'd she do that for? Is beyond my... I don't understand. So it's her fault that this is happening, it's not my fault. It's not my fault, it's not America's fault, it's not the Italian government's fault, it's Sgrena's fault."

[madokie]

1. one can't make this shit up

[stranger81]

3. yup . . . . heard this driving in to work this morning, and my blood's still boiling.

It takes a stunning amount of chutzpah for Lozano to blame an unarmed woman at whom he fired 300 or 400 rounds for the fact that he's a murderous sack of crap.

[NYVet]

4. You have a stunning amount of chutzpah.

To expect a man to have psychic abilities and be able to read the mind of the driver of a car that has ignored warning signs and is speeding at an American checkpoint in a country that one of the weapons of choice is a carbomb in seconds is astounding.

Maybe the driver should have followed the rules and slowed down, or maybe the Italian government could have let us know that she would be coming back to the Green Zone that night?

[Don Claybrook]

5. do you have a link for this fairy tale?

You're posting lies; hopefully not of your own construction.

[NYVet]

11. My sources.

1. Personal experience in a combat zone, and as a SAW gunner for almost 2 years. The M-249 SAW only carries a 200 round belt of ammo. This is contained in a green or brown plastic box that attaches to the bottom of the weapon. To have a 300 or 400 round belt of ammunition, you would need to link 2 belts together. When you do this, it creates a single belt of ammunition about six feet long. A belt that long is easy to twist and break, causing an unexpected stoppage in firing. No soldier worth a damn is going to do something like this that will take the main weapon system out of a fight and possibly get him killed.
(Added on Edit)I highly doubt that 300-400 rounds were fired. The time required for a vehicle moving at 30 mph to cross 100 meters is far less time than to fire 300 rounds from an M-249.
Also, investigations by both Italian and US peroneel state that it was less than 75 rounds fired.


2. News reports (CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN) concerning car bombs being used in Iraq.

3. News Reports from the time that this happened that stated that the car was moving at a high rate of speed and didn't respond to signals from the checkpoint.
I went back and did a google search for some articles from when it happened.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usshot064247400may06,0,7271193.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=11920&cid=8&cname=News






And thanks for the personal attack. I appreciate being called a liar by someone who has never met me.

[Rex]

13. Stop making excuses for a murderer.

Or do you like to defend people who kill in cold blood?

[NYVet]

17. No more than

You like to eat the hearts of small children who wander into your yard.


You were not there to see exactly what happened, and have not refuted my posts, so until you do, I will not be any more civil with you than you are with me.

[Rex]

21. Nice try, but I didn't murder someone in cold blood.

Thanks for trying to make yourself feel better. :hi:

[NYVet]

23. You made the accusation that Mario Lozano killed someone in cold blood.

The last time I checked, people were innocent until proven guilty.

I'm not trying to make myself feel better, I am merely standing up for someone who is not here to defend themselves.

[stranger81]

15. you may want to check out JudiLynn's post below, since it

contains a lot of information you're apparently not familiar with.

[stranger81]

6. there don't appear to be any rules at these checkpoints except

that if you're not in American camo or in an American tank or Blackwater humvee, you should expect to be shot like a dog on sight.

[stranger81]

7. oh -- did I mention this happened in a country we INVADED

and are still OCCUPYING?

Yet it's everyone else that needs to follow the "RULES."

Like I said, a stunning amount of chutzpah. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Rex]

12. edit

wrong post

[Romulox]

14. The Italians ALSO invaded and occupied that same country, please remember. nt

[Richard Steele]

8. You have clearly gotten your impressions of this incident from the wrong sources.

Ridiculous RW claptrap-spouting sources.

[NYVet]

16. I was unaware that I had to ignore the local news programs because they all lie

What would you suggest I read, since I can't trust anything from CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or CBS? I guess I can also ignore the NY Times, Newsweek, time Magazine, etc?



:sarcasm:

[Richard Steele]

19. Well, since the US Military's version of events has been PROVEN false, you might stop believing it.

Just a thought.

[NYVet]

24. Please post a link for your comment. (NT)

[Richard Steele]

25. You've already been pointed to some good information. Apparently, you choose to ignore it.

So why would I bother? :silly:

[NYVet]

28. Some good information?

None of the articles I read had any specific rebuttals they were more hyperbole than anything.

Example: "It was simply a tank parked on the side of the road that opened fire on them. There was no process of trying to stop the car, she said, or any signals."

The M-1025 and M-1026 HMMVW is hardly a tank. The HMMVW is less than 1/2 the height and width, and has a main gun tube that is almost as long as the HMMVW.

[Richard Steele]

29. An old proverb: "It's impossible to awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep".

You have a nice day. :hi:

[BB1]

33. seems there were all kinds of warnings about this particular vehicle

as in: don't shoot it, it's got released hostages on board. Apparently they kept shooting even when command fired up the radio with 'cease fires'.

ASpart from that: very well for a soldier to criticise a journalist. Happens the other way around as well. But you can't argue with the fact that she was there to find out what's going on (and maybe even put a stop to it) and had to get herself in a dangerous place. Because that's what reporters do. At least, European reporters. (I went to Baghdad as well, in 2002, but for the lack of American soldiers I didn't only feel safe, but even welcomed.)

I'm not calling you a liar. But don't start on 'following the rules', because the 'rules of engagement' would never have gotten you in Iraq in the first place. Troll.

[Demit]

2. Lozano might have learned how to be a U.S. soldier, but he still doesn't know how to be a man.

[Judi Lynn]

9. He's trying to talk himself into believing she deserved to be killed, and that it's no one's fault

the agent leaned in front of her at the last minute and got the final shots himself. It's clear he's trying to reinforce someone's talking points about her in order to justify killing her outright. Once that diversion from reality can finally be accepted, something accidental, like the murder of the agent can be chalked up to fate.

The language itself is the deprecatory, language of hate-building: "She wanted to mingle with the terrorists and all that." Right. Wanted to "mingle." Kill her!

With regard to the actual shooting, the Italian report claims that the Toyota Corolla car in which the three were travelling did not approach "Blocking Point BP541" (close to the airport) at a high speed, as claimed by the US military. The Italian report suggests that the car was "in no hurry" and that Major C. was driving carefully because the road was wet, he was approaching a tight bend and talking on his mobile phone.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2005/0503/1113002072158.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~

US attacked Sgrena: companion
05/03/2005 17:02 - (SA)

Rome - The companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Saturday levelled serious accusations at US troops who fired at her convoy as it was nearing Baghdad airport, saying the shooting had been deliberate.

"The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," Pier Scolari said on leaving Rome's Celio military hospital where Sgrena is to undergo surgery following her return home.

"They were 700m from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints."

The shooting late on Friday was overheard by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office, which was on the phone with one of the secret service agents, said Scolari. "Then the US military silenced the cellphones," he charged.

"Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive," he added.

When Sgrena was kidnapped on February 4 she was writing an article on refugees from Fallujah seeking shelter at a Baghdad mosque after US forces bombed the former Sunni rebel stronghold.

Sgrena told RaiNews24 television Saturday a "hail of bullets" rained down on the car taking her to safety at Baghdad airport, along with three secret service agents, killing one of them.

"I was speaking to (agent) Nicola Calipari (...) when he leant on me, probably to protect me, and then collapsed and I realised he was dead," said Sgrena, who was being questioned on Saturday by two Italian magistrates.
(snip)

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1671944,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
Italian reconstruction of the incident is significantly different. Sgrena told colleagues the vehicle was not travelling fast and had already passed several checkpoints on its way to the airport. The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle. Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded Italians, the soldiers' first move was to confiscate their weapons and mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome for more than an hour.

Enzo Bianco, the opposition head of the parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's secret services, described the American account as unbelievable. 'They talk of a car travelling at high speed, and that is not possible because there was heavy rain in Baghdad and you can't travel at speed on that road,' Bianco said. 'They speak of an order to stop, but we're not sure that happened.'

Pier Scolari, Sgrena's partner who flew to Baghdad to collect her, put an even more sinister construction on the events, suggesting in a television interview that Sgrena was the victim of a deliberate ambush. 'Giuliana may have received information which led to the soldiers not wanting her to leave Iraq alive,' he claimed.

Sgrena was kidnapped on 4 February as she interviewed refugees from Falluja near a Baghdad mosque. Two weeks later her captors issued a video of her weeping and pleading for help, calling on all foreigners to leave Iraq. Italian journalists were subsequently withdrawn from the city after intelligence warnings of a heightened threat to their safety.
(snip)

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1431436,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
New details are emerging about Sgrena's shooting and the death of the Italian official, Nicola Calipari, that bear reporting in English (this, of course, remains a significant story in Italy). Independent journalist Naomi Klein recently met with Sgrena in the Rome military hospital where she has been since returning to Italy on March 5.

"Giuliana is quite a bit sicker than we have been led to believe," Klein says. "She was fired on by a gun at the top of a tank, which means that the artillery was very, very large. It was a four-inch bullet that entered her body and broke apart. And it didn't just injure her shoulder, it punctured her lung. Her lung continues to fill with fluid and there continues to be complications stemming from that fairly serious injury."

This case has been written off by U.S. officials as a "horrific accident" that occurred on what we are told is "the most dangerous road in Iraq," where insurgents are constantly waiting in the bushes to attack. The Pentagon further contends that the Italians failed to slow down at a checkpoint and only after repeated attempts to stop the car did soldiers fire on the Italians. The problem is, according to Sgrena, this shooting didn't happen on that road. What's more, Sgrena says that there was no U.S. checkpoint for which to slow down.

"This is treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would be a shooting like this on that road," Klein says. "I was on that road myself, and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints. What Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that she wasn't on that road at all."

According to Klein, when Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded, they were on a secured road that can only be accessed through the heavily-fortified Green Zone and is reserved exclusively for top foreign embassy and U.S. officials. "It's a completely separate road, actually a Saddam-era road, it would seem, that allowed his vehicles to pass directly from the airport to his palace," says Klein. "And now that is the secured route between the U.S. military base at the airport and the U.S. controlled Green Zone and the U.S. embassy."

"It was a VIP road, for embassy people, not for normal people," Sgrena told Klein. "I was only able to be on that road because I was with people from the Italian embassy."
(snip)

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21613/

[stranger81]

10. awesome post -- thanks for putting all this information in the thread.

I'd frankly forgotten just how blatant and terrible this incident was.

[Judi Lynn]

22. There's been so much crap thrown at us in the news it's hard to keep track of it all! n/t

[Romulox]

18. The Italians hid the fact that they paid Sgrena's ransom from the US...

You've neglected one major inconsistency. How could the US Army know she was on that road that day if the Italians refuse (to this day) to admit they paid a ransom to free her?

There's more to this story...

[gratuitous]

20. By this point, I think the military has earned major skepticism

If the military is claiming it didn't know that Sgrena was on her way back, I wouldn't believe it for a second without independent, rock solid corroboration from an unimpeachable source. I have no information that the military folks didn't know this woman was coming back to the Green Zone, and if the only source of that assertion is the U.S. military, I'm not inclined to trust them any further than I could caber toss the Washington Monument.

The military has earned the public's mistrust with every atrocity, every murder, every little "oops" for the civilians they've targeted and killed from Kama Aido to Abu Ghraib and beyond. So many horrible stories have come out that were initially and emphatically denied by the military only to turn out to be even worse once independent eyes had a chance to look at the situation, that I wouldn't believe the sun was coming up in the east if someone in a uniform told me that.

This poor schlub's protestations of innocence are to be completely expected; his words cross over into the despicable when he tries to blame his victim for shooting her.

[Disturbed]

27. This guy sure sounds like a jerk.

His stupid statements don't explain why the car was fired upon.

[stranger81]

26. because she'd already passed through a myriad of US

checkpoints on her way to arriving at the checkpoint where Mr. Lozano was waiting with his finger on the trigger . . . .

[Judi Lynn]

30. Absolutely. So glad you pointed it out. n/t

[malaise]

31. Is this also true re the ABC anchor who was

seriously injured?

[Disturbed]

32. This situation was seriously discussed right after it happened.

There is something real mysterious about what happened.