Italian journalist rescue disaster

[wellard]

The anger over this has been rising in me over the last 24 hours or so. Not at the USA like most people are complaining about but at the incompetent actions of the Italians and the insulting comments and actions from the Italian government.

First...

"journalist Giuliana Sgrena claimed American soldiers gave no warning before they opened fire and said Sunday she could not rule out that U.S. forces intentionally shot at the car carrying her to the Baghdad airport, wounding her and killing the Italian agent who had just won her freedom after a month in captivity".

Well 'scuse me but if I was poor old GI Joe wanting to get back home to his wife and kids in the USA and a car was speeding to the checkpoint then I would have ripped so many bullets into that car that no one would have survived. Has anyone in Italy being watching the reports from Iraq. Day after day suicide bombers have driven to check points to blow themselves up ...... What do they expect Gi Joe to do? Shout friend or frikken foe (in Italian of course)? Give me strength!

"The White House called the shooting a "horrific accident" and restated its promise to investigate fully."

Well they should start by investigating the IQ of the friken driver!


Second....


If the Italian government paid a ransom for her release (and it seems likely) Then the government should be bloody well arrested aiding and abetting in crime and thrown into jail. Seriously you should never EVER negotiate with terrorist scum. Every victim taken after this victory for the terrorists should be swapped with a member of belasconi's government if justice was to prevail.

The Italians are outraged by what happened? ...... they need to take a long hard look at themselves.

***The above quotes are from ***

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=556898

[Stratos]

Paying the ransom for hostages are probably more common than governments wants us to know. It's not exactly something you go out in public with.

[shamrock_uk]

There are a couple of points missing from your post though Wellard.

1) She was actually warned by her Iraqi captors that the American's might try to stop her leaving

"Everyone knows that the Americans do not like negotiations to free hostages, and because of this I don't see why I should exclude the possibility of me having been the target," she said. And writing in her left-wing Il Manifesto newspaper, she said upon her release her kidnappers warned her to be careful 'because there are Americans who don't want you to go back'."

2) The other day I watched the frontline documentary (which you can find here where their reporter was embedded with US troops for one month.

The US troops at one point were asked to set up a roadblock. They set this up at the bottom of a sliproad (which had a big curve) leading onto a motorway/freeway.

A car turned off the freeway, one or two warning shots were fired, then the troops opened fire on the car.

There were several things I noticed about this -

a) The car wasn't even fully around the bend, and was so far away that it looked about 1cm in height on the screen, if that. I would estimate that it was several hundred metres away.

b) The warning shots were actually not that loud, and that was with the camera man standing right next to the troops. Its therefore quite possible that the car driver did not hear the shots given his distance.

c) Seeing as the car driver was still going round the bend, it is likely that he was looking straight ahead and therefore didn't even see the troops.

d) The first instinct when you hear a gunshot in somewhere like Iraq is to get the hell away from the area and drive faster.

To cut a long story short, I thought the troops opened fire on this car far far too quickly - the car hadn't even turned off the freeway for long enough to ascertain its speed, let along that it was speeding up as the troops claimed.

Its therefore not unreasonable at all that it was a case of trigger-happiness and poor roadblock procedures rather than driver error. This would certainly account for the rather large number of innocent deaths at roadblocks where American troops have opened fire.

Originally posted by wellard: Well they should start by investigating the IQ of the friken driver!

It's also quite likely that the driver was from the Italian secret service and thus has a rather high IQ and is fairly well trained.


As for paying ransom money to hostages, consider it the price for Italian support in your little coalition. Berlusconi has put his neck out for Bush and has been severely weakened domestically - if he can prevent his citizens from being killed in a war that the majority of his country thinks is injust then of course he's going to pay! It's just political sense. Every government performs morally dubious acts - this hardly ranks amongst the most terrible.

[ 03-07-2005, 07:53 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[shamrock_uk]

A good article on the failings of checkpoint procedures can be found here

Some quotes..

*snip - italian hostage story* But the conditions for the journey, up a road that is considered the most dangerous in Iraq, were broadly the same as those facing all civilian drivers approaching American checkpoints or convoys. American soldiers operate under rules of engagement that give them authority to open fire whenever they have reason to believe that they or others in their unit may be at risk of suicide bombings or other insurgent attacks. Next to the scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, no other aspect of the American military presence in Iraq has caused such widespread dismay and anger among Iraqis, judging by their frequent outbursts on the subject. Daily reports compiled by Western security companies chronicle many incidents in which Iraqis with no apparent connection to the insurgency are killed or wounded by American troops who have opened fire on suspicion that the Iraqis were engaged in a terrorist attack. Accounts of the incidents vary widely, as they have in the incident involving Ms. Sgrena, with the American command emphasizing aspects of drivers' behavior that aroused legitimate concerns, and survivors saying, often, that they were doing nothing threatening. Since few of the incidents are ever formally investigated, many families are left with unresolved feelings of bitterness. American and Iraqi officials say they have no figures on such casualties, just as they say they have no reliable statistics on the far higher number of civilian deaths in the fighting that began with the American-led invasion nearly two years ago. But any Westerner working in Iraq comes across numerous accounts of apparently innocent deaths and injuries among drivers and passengers who drew American fire, often in circumstances that have left the Iraqis puzzled as to what, if anything, they did wrong. The confusion arises, in most cases, from a clash of perspectives. The American soldiers know that circumstances erupt in which a second's hesitation can mean death, and say civilian deaths are a regrettable but inevitable consequence of a war in which suicide bombers have been the insurgents' most deadly weapon. But Iraqis say they have no clear idea of American engagement rules, and accuse the American command of failing to disseminate the rules to the public, in newspapers or on radio and television stations. The military says it takes many precautions to ensure the safety of civilians. But a military spokesman in Baghdad declined in a telephone interview on Sunday to describe the engagement rules in detail, saying the military needed to maintain secrecy over how it responds to the threat of car bombs.

You begin to see how the Iraqi's might find it difficult to know what the procedures are then...

Basman Fadhil, 29, a taxi driver interviewed Sunday in Baghdad, described driving home to the southern Doura neighborhood on Jan. 13. The power was out, as it often is in the capital, and the streets were very dark. He was only a block or so from his house when bullets shattered his windshield. "I thought it was thieves trying to steal my car, so I drove faster," he said. One bullet struck him in the shoulder, causing him to crash into a concrete barrier. Getting out of the badly damaged vehicle, he staggered a few steps until American and Iraqi soldiers began yelling at him from the darkness not to move. When he asked the soldiers why they had shot at him, Mr. Fadhil said, they told him there had been gunmen in the area shortly before.

Well, that's a good reason...

Ms. Sgrena and her companions were not the only Western civilians to have come under American fire, according to a series of unclassified government reports that receive extremely restricted circulation, copies of which have been made available to The Times. The reports outline at least six incidents since December in which American troops have fired on vehicles carrying Westerners in the area around the airport. The reports chronicled one incident in January at a checkpoint near the airport road when an American soldier fired at a car even though it was moving slowly and the driver was holding his identification card in plain sight out of the window. The soldier finally waved the car away and forced it to drive down the wrong side of a road.

In early February, a private security company carrying Western clients was fired upon by American troops on the airport road itself. "This is the second time in three days," the report on the incident noted. Later that month, a Western contractor approaching a checkpoint at roughly five miles an hour after dropping off a passenger at the airport heard gunfire, assumed he was coming under attack by insurgents and tried to speed away. But the fire turned out to have been from American troops, who fired warning shots, then hit the passenger side windshield, forcing the driver to stop, climb from the car and put his hands in the air.

Nice to know that five miles an hour is enough to get you warning shots...

One of the starkest incidents in recent weeks occurred on the evening of Jan. 18 in the town of Tal Afar, a trouble spot west of the city of Mosul, where a platoon from the 25th Infantry Division was on a foot patrol. Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images, an American photo agency, said that soldiers of the Apache company were walking in near darkness toward an intersection along a deserted commercial street when they saw the headlights of a sedan turning into the street about 100 yards ahead. An officer ordered the troops over their headsets to halt the vehicle, and all raised weapons. One soldier fired a three-shot burst into the air, but the car kept coming, Mr. Hondros said, and then half a dozen troops fired at least 50 rounds, until the car was peppered with bullets and rolled gently to a stop against a curb. "I could hear sobbing and crying coming from t he car, children's voices," Mr. Hondros said. Next he said, one of the rear doors opened, and six children, four girls and two boys, one only 8 years old, tumbled into the street. They were splattered with blood. Mr. Hondros, whose photographs of the incident were published around the world, said that the parents of four of the children lay dead in the front seat. Their bodies were riddled with bullets, and the man's skull had smashed.

As most of these are reports are from Westerners, hopefully their version of events would carry more weight with ye sceptics than the 'terrorist' Iraqis

Put these "poor old GI Joe's" on a pedestal if you want, call them national heroes if you want; whatever helps you to justify their presence in another country.

But at the same time, accept that they have been responsible for the deaths of many, many civilians.

Accept that the procedures for handling traffic are not that great, at the very least.

Therefore consider the possibility that the Italian's are quite right to be indignant about this.

Normal Iraqi's are equally indignant and it happens to them much much more often - but the US doesn't record civilian casualty figures, Western media rarely gives the incidents coverage and any disgruntled Iraqi's are marginalised as insurgents and thus their views are not taken seriously.

And just to put a human face on it, because its so easy to gloss over civilian deaths in Iraq: The kids left behind after their parents were killed in the incident described above. And of course, when they grow up and hate the US they'll be reported by US media as more 'terrorists' and the fact that they may have a valid reason for hating America will never be mentioned.

The situation is not as simple as you make out Wellard - American troops can, and do, make mistakes - this event may well turn out to have been one of them.


Many edits, sorry.

[ 03-07-2005, 08:31 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[shamrock_uk]

And just because I always end up arguing against the occupation of Iraq and would like to provide some balance, I should probably say that I actually agree with your sentiment Wellard about the ransom money.

I think its morally dubious, rewarding criminality and definitely not an example to follow.

Not every country has the same attitude as the US and UK though - to allow one of your countrymen to die through inaction requires a certain mindset within the electorate, one that apparently doesn't exist in Italy.

In my personal opinion though, there are far greater crimes being committed in Iraq at the moment so 'righteous anger' directed at the Italian government rings a bit false in my ears, hence my original comments on this.

Hmm...looking back that all seems a bit of a rant, but please don't take it personally Wellard. In the same way that you get angry over some of the issues, I seem to get progressively more angry as well whilst writing! At least it makes for lively debate [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 03-07-2005, 08:48 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Larry_OHF]

I am really upset that this has occurred and I blame the US for their itchy trigger finger as much as I blame the driver of that truck for not expecting trouble and taking it more carefully...I think both countries can share blame. I mean...if we are occupying the place, then the Italians maybe should have checked with us to make a clear pathway. They could have asked for our help with an escort truck to get through the checkpoints safely. Sounds like a good idea to me, and I am not even getting paid to think! I am not a military man, so I do not know what was the right thing to do, but surely there could have been a better way.

By the way, my favorite cousin is over there now, and was sent to Germany for treatment when shrapnel from an exploding truck got him in the belly. His friend beside him took shit to the face and it blinded him. Now that he has recovered, they have sent him back into Iraq.

He is one year overdue to come home, and they say that he may come home soon. His dad is a high ranking Pentagon official, so he gets inside news. Until he gets released finally, I hope he don't let any more trucks get near him.

[shamrock_uk]

Sorry to hear about that Larry, glad he's back on his feet now.

One year overdue?! Is that the normal state of affairs? I understood that troops are rotated?

I take your point about the Italians - I haven't found anything saying whether the embassy co-ordinated with the American troops or not. I dare say that will come out in the inquiry, but if they didn't let the American's know they were coming then they are fools and I agree with you 100%!

[ 03-07-2005, 10:31 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Stratos]

Originally posted by shamrock_uk: And just because I always end up arguing against the occupation of Iraq and would like to provide some balance, I should probably say that I actually agree with your sentiment Wellard about the ransom money. I think its morally dubious, rewarding criminality and definitely not an example to follow. Not every country has the same attitude as the US and UK though - to allow one of your countrymen to die through inaction requires a certain mindset within the electorate, one that apparently doesn't exist in Italy. In my personal opinion though, there are far greater crimes being committed in Iraq at the moment so 'righteous anger' directed at the Italian government rings a bit false in my ears, hence my original comments on this. Hmm...looking back that all seems a bit of a rant, but please don't take it personally Wellard. In the same way that you get angry over some of the issues, I seem to get progressively more angry as well whilst writing! At least it makes for lively debate [img]smile.gif[/img]

Keep in mind, though, that many smaller nations have no capabilities whatsoever to rescue their citizens through a complex rescue mission and both the Iraqi forces and the Coalition forces have their hands full to offer much help. Sweden have at least one citizen held hostage by kidnappers but the government can't do much about it.

[ 03-07-2005, 11:30 AM: Message edited by: Stratos ]

[Morgeruat]

Originally posted by shamrock_uk: One year overdue?! Is that the normal state of affairs? I understood that troops are rotated?

They're supposed to be rotated out, but due to shortages it doesn't always happen.

[shamrock_uk]

Originally posted by Stratos: Keep in mind, though, that many smaller nations have no capabilities whatsoever to rescue their citizens through a complex rescue mission and both the Iraqi forces and the Coalition forces have their hands full to offer much help. Sweden have at least one citizen held hostage by kidnappers but the government can't do much about it.

Good point Stratos...I never thought of that. I guess I assumed you pays your money and get the result!

I'm afraid I derailed this topic slightly onto checkpoints, so to get it back on track, would you support Sweden paying a ransom for this hostage assuming the recovery details could be sorted out?

Thanks for the reply Morgeraut, I didn't realise the army was so stretched that people were having to stay that long! At least everyone involved can hopefully find some comfort in the expanded NATO role for training Iraqi forces that was agreed last week - with luck that will ease the pressure on US soldiers a bit.