Surely someone could plan a little betterthan this.
When I first heard the news of her release, I was so happy. Having seen her on TV, so gaunt and frightened, made me hope for a quick release. That was early in the day Friday. When the rest of the news came out, I was just appalled. I know many people will defend what happened, citing the “rules of engagement” thing. But wow, talk about a bad day all around for everyone. If Italy starts bad mouthing us, I suppose we’ll have to stop eating pasta and tiramisu to appear patriotic??? Yeah, that freedom fries thing made a huge impact on world events. :eek:
How does someone apologize for something like this? Hard to do with foot-in-mouth disease.
Worst. Assignment. Ever.
Can’t fault the US army on this one, according to the CNN story. It only gives one side of the story but: High speed moving car told to stop. Car doesn’t stop. Warning shots fired. Car doesn’t stop. Shots fired into the engine block. One person dead, two injured. Sad and unfortunate, but slow down next time.
I agree with the OP though, somebody could have planned better, not necessarily the soldiers assigned to the roadblock.
I wasn’t intending to blame the soldiers at the roadblock. However, a better trained driver; a military vehicle escort; other precautions would probably have avoided such a mess.
The good news is I was freed by the Italian hostage takers.
The bad news is…
I know, that’s how I understood it too, sorry if I wasn’t clear about that.
Well, I suppose the US Ambassador in Rome must avoid sitting down for a few days while recovering from a thorough reaming by Berlusconi, but that comes with the territory and any PM worth the title should be expected to do at least that.
Still, what a colossal muck-up.
According to The Guardian, the Italians are giving a markedly different story.
It’s things like this that make me sort of reconsider my deep desire to go into journalism…
I thought there was some question, too, as to how people were shot if they were firing into the engine block. Was it just poor aim?
[QUOTE=beckwall]
If Italy starts bad mouthing us, I suppose we’ll have to stop eating pasta <snip>/QUOTE]
You mean Freedom Noodles.
It could happen:
(a) Moving target, and maybe moving shooter
(b) even properly aimed, automatic weapons “spread” their rounds at a distance anyway
(c) The entire volume between the two front fenders is not filled with stuff that will stop a high-v bullet
(d) Ammo from an M-60 or M-249 hitting an actual steel engine block, may ricochet, or more likely shatter at the same time as spalling some metal frags off the block itself, and the shrapnel retain enough kE to pierce the firewall.
Giuliana Sgrena says she believes 300-400 rounds were fired. I can see where that might kill a person.
I hate to second-guess our soldiers, but on the other hand, there were no other witnesses, so they can say whatever they think they can get away with.
I feel just awful for the Italian agent who got killed.
No, the driver was there, he’s fine. Sgrena got hit by shrapnel; I don’t know if the security guy (another worst assignment ever) was hit by a bullet or a large piece of shrapnel.
125 people were killed by a car bomb early last week in Iraq, so stopping cars the hard way if they insist on barging ahead is justified IMO. But–still a lot of questions here.
The driver says he wasn’t speeding. Sgrena says they had been through a number of checkpoints already with no trouble. Then why was there a problem with THIS one? If, as some Italian conspiracy buffs are muttering, they wanted to silence her, they could have done it as the car approached the first checkpoint, so that their story would be stronger.
The soldiers, OTOH, say that nobody had informed them who was in the car or that she’d been freed at all and/or was travelling on that road. Knowing military communication screwups, this I readily believe. They also say they flashed lights, yelled, etc., the usual procedure. I have no particular reason to doubt this.
We’re missing way too much info at this point to judge. I think the driver is crucial. Was he speeding? If yes, why would he try to jump an American checkpoint in car-bomb central? If no, then did he see the pre-shooting warnings? Why not, if he’d already gone through other checkpoints? How experienced was he at driving the most dangerous road segment in Iraq?
I’m the kind of person who never attributes to human venality what can be put down to humans screwing up, but I’d be surprised if even the most venal black-ops official would think it would be a good idea to try to silence a reporter who was a female just-released Westerner. Hell, if they tried to kill everybody reporter who wrote something against the war there’d be no reporters left in Europe and half of America! 
Whoops–just to clarify, another possibility is that the soldiers started shooting madly w/o following the flash the lights and shout procedure; but why wouldn’t they unless the driver was going like a bat out of hell?
If they didn’t because they just screwed everything up, throw the book at 'em. Nobody needs accidents like this between good allies. I think we have to wait to hear from the soldiers and the driver. If the reporter was in the back seat, I don’t know what she would have seen. Was it dark? Were the windows tinted?
[Homer]mmmm, Freedom Noodles, mmmm, worth dying for, mmmm[/Homer]