Iraq War: And this is how we're treating our friends?

Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was held captive by Iraqi guerrillas, was freed by Italian police.  Then she only avoided being killed by American troops at a checkpoint because one of the Italian security service men who had secured her release threw himself on top of her and took the fatal bullet(s) himself.  Sgrena was wounded by shrapnel, and the other two Italian security men in the car were wounded, as well.  The agent killed was Nicolo Calipari, who had particular expertise in negotiating hostage releases in situations like this.  He was 50 years old and had two children.

The official American story was that the car was approaching a checkpoint at high speed.  The driver ignored verbal commands to slow down.  Then the American troops fired warning shots and the car didn't slow.  Then they opened fire on the vehicle itself.  This is the standard story that is put out whenever Americans shoot up a car full of Iraqi civilians at a checkpoint.

But that story looks suspicious with even the most moderate amount of thought.  This was a high-profile kidnapping, and it was Italian security people who were bringing her out, not some random Iraqi civilian who happened to be helping her.  Were the American checkpoints along the way not notified of this?  And did Italian security with experience in-country really blast up at high speed to an American checkpoint?  Would they have ignored shouted warnings?  Would they have ignored warning shots?  The story doesn't pass the smell test.

Sgrena herself says the official US story is bogus.  Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a conservative media magnate who has been supporting Bush diplomatically and with some troops in Iraq, was reported to be beside himself with rage over the incident.  He called in the American ambassodor for a dressing-down, and is demanding that his friend Bush's government conduct a thorough and conclusive investigation of the incident.  The Italian equivalent of the American Justice Department has begun an official investigation of the killing.

Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said that the shooting would not damage relations between the US and Italy.  (Fini is headof the "postfascist" party that is the party that is the direct organizational successor to Mussolini's Fascists, but his party is accepted even by leftwing parties in Italy as now having evolved to being a genuinely conservative party. )  But Italian President Azeglio Ciampi, the head of state who ordinarily avoid mixing in day-to-day politics, also issued a statement demanding a full American investigation of the incident.

Berlusconi met Sgrena at the airport, after which she was taken to a military hospital for treatment of the wound inflicted by the Americans.  It helps to understand the signficance of this if we keep in mind that Sgrena works for the leftwing, "postcommunist" newspaper "Il Manifesto," so the conservative Berlusconi has no particular partisan reason to show special sympathy for her.  (Sgrena also does work for the European-style liberal German weekly, Die Zeit, which tends to be more friendly to American policies that even many conservative papers there.)  It just seems to be, you know, that the Italian prime minister, the prime minister who has taken a lot of political heat for his highly unpopular support of Bush in Iraq, really doesn't appreciate his American allies casually shooting up Italian citizens and security personnel.

Sgrena says that it wasn't even a checkpoint at all, but rather a US patrol that attacked the car with no warning at all. (La periodista italiana denuncia que fue alertada por sus captores de una posible 'intervención' de EEUU El Mundo 03/06/05).  She says her captors told her, "the Americans don't want you to return," whatever that may mean.  She says she is not excluding the possibility that the American soldiers deliberately targeted her, possibly out of a policy opposing negotiations for release of hostages in Iraq.

The same idea had occurred to Steve Soto (03/04/05):

The woman survives a month with the insurgents but is nearly killed by us after she is freed.

Swell. Don’t our forces talk with their coalition partners, or is there a reason why we didn’t want her to leave the country?

This may turn out to be a case of incredible carelessness.  Or it may turn out to be a consequence of the kind of lawlessness Rumsfeld's Pentagon has tolerated and even encouraged.

The case is also significant because, for Americans, it's all too easy to hear stories about Iraqi civilians gunned down at checkpoints and see the standard formula in a press release - fast car, didn't respond to warnings, etc. - and think, well, our soldiers have to err on the side of caution, and this is just a tragedy of war.

But when you read about the Italian journalist who had just been freed from captivity describing how Nicolo Calipari died on top of her taking bullets that would almost certainly have killed her, and we see the Pentagon issuing a highly implausible explanation for the even, it really makes you wonder what's happening with all these other checkpoint shootings.

Juan Cole noted on 03/05/05, based on the original "checkpoint" version of the story:

US military forces have killed innocent Iraqi civilians at such checkpoints on a number of occasions, and, indeed, statistics for spring-summer 2004 show that the US was responsible for killing more Iraqi civilians than did the guerrillas. I cannot remember interim PM Iyad Allawi reacting as stiffly to such incidents as Berlusconi just did.

And these are our friends we're treating this way.