…before you get a chance to run away from the thread-according to the Italian driver, as cited in the post above you-the car did stop…
Stop. Stop.
Any comments now?
I’m definitely leaning towards the Italians being the ones who messed up.
The Americans involved have probably been manning that checkpoint of checkpoints similar for weeks, maybe months. I don’t think they would open fire if the vehicle coming in was coming in at an acceptable rate of speed, or was obviously coming up to stop at the check point.
For one, I’m sure the Americans at the checkpoints had some idea that an important official was coming through (aside from Sgrena there was an important State department official coming through the checkpoints as well IIRC.) So they and their commander (since they want to keep their jobs and their good reputations) aren’t going to be high strung or trigger happy.
Sgrena is saying an American patrol “ambushed them” or something like that. I don’t think there is much factual basis for such an idea, and either she has very low observational abilities, is stupid, or is lying about that. Because I’ve seen no evidence that an American patrol was involved.
If an American patrol was involved then it will ultimately be labelled as our fault in the papers, because it will seem like we went out and “hunted” them, eventhough in the case of a patrol it still wouldn’t tell us who’s fault it was.
If I had to guess I’d say this is what happened:
The Italian driver (who is probably going faster than he should) hears/sees warning shots, panics and starts accelerating, he’s probably not sure which way the shots came from, and may even think insurgents are attacking.
The American soldiers see the car speeding up, and the second they speed up in response to warning shots (no matter any other externalities) it’s time to kill the driver, destroy the engine, whatever it takes to stop that car.
If the warning shots were fired at a point where it would be inappropriate (say the car was far off so there was no reason to be alarmed) then we have a double-fault situation. The Americans would be at fault for early firing, but the Italian would be the one who got people killed because he responds to the warning shots by speeding into the checkpoint.
If there were no warning shots and the soldiers just fired into the vehicle, then again it is going to depend. If the car was legitimately speeding and acting inappropriately then the soldiers were justified in trying to stop it. If not, then they weren’t.
Basically I think one side was mostly at fault, but I have no idea which side, and I don’t think any reports are going to be able to ascertain that. And of course in this case whatever report comes out will probably be somewhat political, so certain facts of the case may be “distorted.”
And I also feel little to no sympathy for Sgrena. She’s a profiteering reporter that went overseas to sensationalize a war for a Communist audience. That’s not a sympathetic character in my mind. She’s a propagandist and practically a war profiteer (since we certainly can’t say she’s over in Iraq reporting the facts she isn’t providing any real journalistic services) and if she had any amount of intelligence at all she would have been aware of the risks journalists face.
I also feel the Italian government is just asking for its people to be kidnapped, once you start paying multimillion dollar ransoms out that just tells insurgents, “Hey, kidnap Italians, their government pays us.”
Also it isn’t any kind of “evidence” when a soldier says he was firing at an engine block and bullets end up in the windshield. I’m not sure what kind of firearms the soldiers had but almost definitely in the confusion stray bullets are going to hit places other than the engine block, that’s how firing a gun works when you’re trying to hit a rapidly moving target.
Just incase it gets buried in the page turnover I’ll give this link again
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4333839.stm
oh and
Why do I keep coming back to this thread. It’s masochism, I know.
A light flashes 10m (approx. 32 feet) from car. Okay, travelling as they claim at 40 to 50 km/hr, factoring for human reaction time, if the guy actually stood on the brake pedal, the car would not be able to stop in that short a distance. Where was the light again? Front? Side? We don’t know.
An agent, the drive no less, survives while his partner is killed, and you think he has no reason to… ummmm… colour the truth?
And just 'cuz Berlusconi said it, doesn’t make it indisputable fact.
And for the last fucking time… both parties involved may be at fault here! We just don’t know and we may never find out. It’s Sgrena, that screaming fishwife, that I (mostly) took to the pit. Not the agents trying to save her sorry ass.
Well, if someone asked me to identify the screaming fishwife in this thread, I wouldn’t point to Sgrena, though 
Touche. 
Wait… it’s the pit… :smack:
Fuck you! :wally
Oh fine then. Sure, there was a hail of gunfire fired at a reporter who collaborated with terrorists riding in a car driven at an unsafe speed with the appearance of being a suicide bomber.
Weeeeeeeeeeeee, we can all use hyperbole to confound the discussion.
As I pointed on another thread, the car had already cleared other checkpoints shortly before the last one, if they were able to identify and react acordingly on the others, why not in this one?
My guess, it wasn´t a properly set up check point. Why would the agents speed through or ignore it if they had noticed it?
Seems pretty obvious from the evidence at hand that they didn´t have the time to realize their situation before extreme measures were used by the soldiers; considering the SOP for an incoming unidentified car cited on other posts, an improperly signaled checkpoint becomes almost an ambush for casual drivers.
Apparently this isn’t a settled issue. There will be statements that Sgrena’s car was traveling “in excess of 100 mph” AND that the statement that they had traveled through previous checkpoints during that trip is false.
From ABC News
Can´t belive it, if they were doing 100 MPH and as it´s shown on the pictures linked earlier, they front left tire was shot and blown, they´d all be dead and the car would be a wreck. It doesn´t add up.
Knowing the way things can be spun, "we know the cars was traveling at speeds of more then 100mph can mean both
- 100mph between checkpoints
- 100mph through them.
Anyway, sign me up with the “we need more info” crowd.
You are sure the tire was shot and blown? And if so are you sure it was blown at max speed? 100mph does seem excessive and dangerous. It may be possible they were trying to get a newly freed hostage out of the country fast. The article says evidence will prove it. So we will see,wether you can believe it or not.
There’s quite a bit of confusion over just what or wasn’t provided to the Americans – even among high-ranking officials within the Italian government.
Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told state television Wednesday that Calipari had not told the Americans why he was in Iraq. “Calipari duly advised (the US authorities) that he was in Baghdad, and he didn’t advise what he had gone to Iraq to do, because we are a sovereign country.”
Here’s the quote from the article -
Note also the intended change of the highly questionable policy concerning ransom payments to terrorist kidnappers ---- So, it seems, the spotlight on this sad situation may have resulted in at least one positive result -
It appears flat on the pictures I´ve seen, unless the soldiers kept firing on the car after it had stopped I have to conclude that the car wasn´t speeding when it was shot.
Just do the math for yourself, 100 MPH car, if the tire suddenly goes flat two things happen, the tire desintegrates and the car goes ballistic.
For what its worth, and this is only my opinion, US troops would not murder this woman on purpose or because of some x files type conspiracy.
They were probably jumpy, stressed out, and lets face it afraid and not without cause.
IMHO it was a tragic, but avoidable accident, like any friendly fire incident. Maybe in future US troops should show more restraint, but if the car coming towards you may contain a suicide bomber, I can see how you would err on the side of “better them than me”
Perhaps a positive that may come out of this will be some improved rules of engagement that protect both the troops and the civilians they are there to protect.
I don’t consider Pentagon spinners anything other than a BS source. We might as well takes Micheal Jackson’s word on his guilt or not.
tagos I see you’ve already decided who lies here and maybe - who tells the truth. Fine with me. But don’t think that necessarily applies to others on this board orr elsewhere in the world. I’m not asking you to reach conclusions on this issue – although considering your post history on this issue one can see you already have. There are clearly more sides to this issue than Sgrena’s side to this story. Look – believe what ever you want. Believe that Sgrena’s car was traveling at one point at such unsafe speeds that it involved “almost losing control” of the car – but, for whatever reason, was going 25 mph as it approached this unknown inspection point. Believe her when she tells you that the US plotted to assassinate her. Believe they passed through previous checkpoints. Believe that no ransoms were paid and had been paid for hostage releases. And go ahead and believe her when Sgrena tells you that the US personnel fired 300 to 400 machinegun rounds at her car from an armored vehicle. Clearly, you’re going to do it anyway –
It applies to me too. The Pentagon is not the most trusted news source.
I believe, from the copious evidence, that the US military are putting their own lives ahead of civilians and the result is a lot of innocent deaths of people they are meant to be helping. It’s what was done in Vietnam with their notorious ‘free-fire zones’. I also believe, from copious evidence, that the US army appears to have no idea how to run checkpoints and this is compounding the problem.
No informed person can come to any other conclusion, if you don’t like it, if you want to keep swallowing patriotic BS then go ahead. It does not alter the reality of the situation that US soldiers are killing innocent people in avoidable incidents like this one.
It may be human nature for soldiers to go for safety first but that does not make it right or supportable. I blame their officers and political leaders for putting them in such a dreadful position.
How about forgetting the mad cunt altogether.
The other agent in the car has said that he stopped immediately when the car was hot with lights. At the same time the bullets started flying. He doesn’t talk 100’s he said a few hit the car and one killed his colleague.
That seems more realistic. I’m not saying it’s the truth of what happened but does put a air of reality about the whole situation while still indicating that it could have been a fuck up on behalf of the US.
The Italians are also saying that the US authorities were aware of the car journey and authorized it.