The times, they are changing,

The Pentagon plans to give South Korea wartime operational control over U.S. troops within three years and will keep U.S. troop levels at more than 20,000 over the next several years, defense officials said yesterday.

Ok, status quo.

Following the latest round of U.S.-South Korea talks July 13 and 14, the Pentagon and South Korean military and defense officials agreed to draw up the command transfer plan that will shift combat authority from the U.S.-led combined forces command to a new structure led by South Korean military commanders and supported by U.S. forces. The goal is to complete the transfer of authority by 2009, but some changes could take five years.

My advice to South Korea: Look at Iceland this year. Total withdrawal = 5% of the economy.

As for troop levels, officials said there are no plans for major U.S. troop cuts beyond plans to have 25,000 troops by 2008. The Pentagon plans to keep 20,000 to 25,000 troops in the country for the foreseeable future, the official said, noting that the fighting power of both U.S. and South Korean forces will remain constant or increase as new weapons are deployed.

The Italian government has conducted its own investigation into the shooting incident that left journalist Giuliana Sgrena wounded and her bodyguard dead. Their stunning conclusion: it was not an assassination attempt by the Americans.

Italy: Agent’s Shooting Not Deliberate (AP)

Italian investigators blamed U.S. military authorities for failing to signal there was a checkpoint ahead on the Baghdad road where American soldiers killed an Italian agent, and concluded that stress, inexperience and fatigue played a role in the shooting, according to a report released Monday.

The probe found no evidence that the March 4 killing of intelligence agent Nicola Calipari was deliberate.

The Italians challenged the American contentions that the car was traveling more than 50 mph, saying it was going half that speed. But, despite their refusal to sign off on the U.S. report that the soldiers bore no blame for the death, the Italian investigators didn’t object to many of the American findings of fact.

Thanks, guys.

The classified version of the 42-page report investigating the Italian roadblock shooting incident that wounded journalist Giuliana Sgrena and killed agent Nicola Calipari was inadvertantly released. National Public Radio says that this version further exhonerates American forces. The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, says it shows severe problems.

Miscues at Roadblock in Iraq (LAT)

A U.S. military probe into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq has found that the soldiers who opened fire had only recently been trained on how to conduct a roadblock, did not know that the Italians’ car was expected along their stretch of road, and, because of a communications breakdown, were manning their irregular nighttime post long after they should have been.

According to an uncensored version of the Army’s report on the March 4 shooting, which killed agent Nicola Calipari and wounded an Italian journalist whom he had helped free from hostage-takers, the soldiers had been ordered to block an onramp along the road to Baghdad’s airport to allow safe passage of a convoy carrying U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte. The report said the troops were asked to set up the roadblock around 7:15 p.m. and they “expected to maintain the blocking position no more than 15 minutes.” Negroponte’s convoy apparently passed by the onramp shortly after 8 p.m., but because of poor communications, the troops were still in place when Calipari’s car approached just before 9 p.m.

The troops’ immediate supervisors had arrived in Iraq just weeks earlier and March 4 was their “first full duty day,” said the uncensored report, which was obtained by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and published in full on its website. As for the troops manning the roadblock, the 42-page report, prepared by Brig. Gen. Peter Vangjel, found that “there is no evidence to indicate that the soldiers were trained to execute blocking positions before arriving in theater.” They were trained for 10 days in February by troops who were leaving Iraq.

The report found no wrongdoing on the part of the soldiers. Period. The fact that they’d been on duty a few extra minutes and were inexperienced at manning roadblocks could have led to problems, to be sure. But they didn’t.

Indeed, the report on NPR’s Morning Edition–hardly a Pentagon apologist–indicates that the classified information gives details into the procedures put in place that bolstered the report’s conclusion that the soldiers involved were not blameworthy.

Technical Error Reveals Classified Info on Death of Italian Agent

The U.S. military issued a report this weekend on the killing of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq. But it appears computer users were able to access classified information about U.S. military operations in an online version of the report.

Audio here. (If the javascript doesn’t work, click the story link and listen from there.)

U.S. soldiers have been cleared in the shooting of Italian Giuliana Sgrena and her bodyguard by a joint American-Italian board.

GIS CLEARED IN ITALIAN’S DEATH (New York Post)

U.S. soldiers reportedly have been cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting of an Italian journalist and an intelligence agent last month in Baghdad. U.S. military officials told NBC News that a joint American-Italian investigation found the soldiers acted properly in firing on a car bearing a just-freed hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and an intelligence officer, Nicola Calipari.

The car was about 130 yards from a checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their lights to get it to stop. They fired warning shots when the car was within 90 yards of the checkpoint, but at 65 yards, they used deadly force. Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded.

Good news, although it’s unlikely to satisfy many.

For background, see the many OTB posts on the Giuliana Sgrena incident.

Correction: Original headline and text referred to Sgrena’s “death.” She received only minor wounds in the incident, which killed the Italian agent who was protecting her. OTB regrets the error.

I’ll be damned: the investigation into the Sgrena shooting incident is being led by Brigadier General Peter Vangjel who, as a major, was my batallion executive officer during Desert Storm.

General Casey mistated his name in his press conference last night:

Brigadier General Dave Vangjel will head our investigation. He is the corps artillery commander for the Multinational Corps.

But seeing it in the transcript, it occured to me that the odds that the Army has another Vangjel in the senior ranks of the field artillery were slim indeed. Sure enough, the NYT (via AP) has the name right:

Casey also told reporters at the Pentagon that another officer, Brig. Gen. Peter Vangjel, is heading the investigation, which is expected to be carried out jointly with Italian officials, and will be completed in three to four weeks.

The last time I saw Vangjel’s name was last July, when he was a colonel (promotable) heading up the Army’s recruiting effort. As I wrote then,

He’s a top-notch guy. If he’s running the day-to-day recruiting operation, it’s being run as well as it possibly can.

In that vein, if anyone can get to the bottom of this mess, Vangjel will do it.

U.S. ‘knew agent going to airport’ (CNN)

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says the intelligence agent shot dead by the U.S. military told them he would be escorting a newly released hostage to the airport — contrary to U.S. claims. Another Italian attache, who was at the Baghdad airport, also told U.S. military personnel the car carrying agent Nicola Calipari and journalist Giuliana Sgrena was on its way to the airport March 4 before the shooting occurred, Berlusconi told the Italian senate on Wednesday.

It’s quite possible that Calipari notified someone and word never made it through the chain of command. Of course, it’s also quite possible that he never got around to telling anyone.

On Tuesday, the top U.S. general in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey, said he had no indication that Italian officials gave advance notice of the route the car was traveling.

I listened to the press conference via CSPAN radio last night and he basically refused to answer any question related to the details. He ducked that question entirely.

Update: My impression may have been faulty. See below.

From the DoD Transcript:

Q: Because the Italians have indicated that there was communication. I was just asking if there was any preliminary indication that –

GEN. CASEY: Yeah. I have no preliminary indication that that’s true.

Later:

Q So your current information, understanding it’s under investigation, understanding it’s a first report and it could change, with all of those caveats, at this point what you are saying, if I understand you correctly, is you have no information that any Italian authorities communicated with the United States about that travel that night.

GEN. CASEY: I, George Casey, have no information — (laughter) — about that.

Q Well, I’m just trying to be very (clear ?) because, as everyone has said, the Italian government has said that they did.

GEN. CASEY: Right. And I’m saying I personally have no information that that is the case. Okay?

Q Would it have come to you if there was information? Would you know?

GEN. CASEY: I would hope so.

My impression on hearing this was a deflection of the question. On reading it, though, it does sound like he’s saying that he has no reason to believe that there was any such communication.

Was Italian Hostage’s Car Speeding? (ABC News)

A senior U.S. military official tells ABC News he believes the investigation into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops in Iraq will ultimately prove the officer’s car was traveling in excess of 100 mph. The car, which was carrying a newly released Italian hostage to freedom, came under fire from U.S. troops at a checkpoint Friday. Intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was hit by a bullet and killed as he threw himself in front of the freed hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena. Sgrena and another intelligence officer were wounded. The shooting has outraged Italians, who mourned Calipari at a state funeral Monday.

Sgrena has said she believes the car was deliberately ambushed because the United States opposes Italy’s policy of negotiating with hostage-takers. The White House has dismissed claims that the shooting was anything but an accident as “absurd.”

Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told his country’s parliament today that the shooting was an accident, but he contradicted the U.S. military’s account of the incident. The U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which controls Baghdad, said in a statement that the vehicle was “traveling at high speeds” and did not stop at the checkpoint, despite a number of warnings. The military said U.S. soldiers only opened fire after the car ignored the warnings. Fini, however, said the car was traveling no faster than 25 mph, and disputed the U.S. military’s assertion that several warnings were given. He said the U.S. government must conduct a thorough investigation, “that responsibilities be pinpointed, and, where found, that the culprits be punished.”

But, according to the senior U.S. military official, the car was traveling at speeds of more than 100 mph. The driver almost lost control several times before the shooting as the car hydroplaned through large puddles, the official told ABC News. The car had not gone through any previous checkpoints, the source added.

The plot thickens. . . .

Rusty Shackleford has several photos, purportedly of the car Giuliana Sgrena was riding in during last Friday’s shooting incident. If they are geniune, they provide rather definitive proof that her account of events is a whopping lie.

My latest article at Tech Central Station, “The Gray Zone Between War and Peace,” is up. It’s an extended and better organized version of some thoughts on the Sgrena shooting and Iraq checkpoint situations I’ve discussed over the last couple days here.

What Iraq’s checkpoints are like (Annia Ciezadlo, CSM) [also at CST]

Editor’s note: On Friday, an Italian intelligence officer was killed and Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was wounded as their car approached a US military checkpoint in Baghdad. The US says the car was speeding, despite hand signals, flashing white lights, and warning shots from US forces. Ms. Sgrena says her car was not speeding and they did see any signals. This personal account, filed prior to the shooting, explains how confusing and risky checkpoints can be – from both sides.

It’s a common occurrence in Iraq: A car speeds toward an American checkpoint or foot patrol. They fire warning shots; the car keeps coming. Soldiers then shoot at the car. Sometimes the on-comer is a foiled suicide attacker (see story), but other times, it’s an unarmed family.

As an American journalist here, I have been through many checkpoints and have come close to being shot at several times myself. I look vaguely Middle Eastern, which perhaps makes my checkpoint experience a little closer to that of the typical Iraqi. Here’s what it’s like.

You’re driving along and you see a couple of soldiers standing by the side of the road – but that’s a pretty ubiquitous sight in Baghdad, so you don’t think anything of it. Next thing you know, soldiers are screaming at you, pointing their rifles and swiveling tank guns in your direction, and you didn’t even know it was a checkpoint.

If it’s confusing for me – and I’m an American – what is it like for Iraqis who don’t speak English?

In situations like this, I’ve often had Iraqi drivers who step on the gas. It’s a natural reaction: Angry soldiers are screaming at you in a language you don’t understand, and you think they’re saying “get out of here,” and you’re terrified to boot, so you try to drive your way out.

This certainly explains a lot about the Sgrena situation.

Update (0854): Andrew Olmstead adds a firsthand account:

I’ve been Iraq-bound training units on how to run traffic control points (TCPs) just like the one that fired on Ms. Sgrena’s vehicle for most of the past year. The biggest threat such units face is a vehicle borne improvised explosive device (i.e. a car bomb) detonating in their midst, so the TCPs are designed to stop vehicles well away from their center, allowing the minimum number of soldiers to risk contact with an approaching vehicle. Vehicles which approach a TCP and fail to stop are dealt with very simply: they are engaged with rifle and machine gun fire because they may be VBIEDs which could destroy the entire TCP. Because this threatens to lead to accidental killings like that involving Ms. Sgrena, we warn units to place signs well forward of the TCP telling drivers they are approaching a TCP and need to slow down and stop or they will be fired upon. The TCP is a delicate balance between protection of the soldiers manning the TCP and protecting the innocent people who come through the TCP.

Cori Dauber observes,

Here’s the bottom line: there are calls for making checkpoints safer on the margins (larger signs, bigger, brighter lights) and those all sound like good ideas. But the real heart of the matter is that the troops have clearly been told to act as if any vehicle that fails to slow down after a certain number of warnings is hostile. That’s where they place presumption: the risk of letting through a suicide bomber is greater than the risk of fatally shooting civilians.

And that’s what’s really upsetting the critics. They want presumption placed the other way. They want the troops to act as if the risk of shooting civilians, fatally or not, is a greater risk than letting through a suicide bomber or a drive-by shooter.

Jim Henley continues to wonder, though, whether our soldiers are acting according to their training. As he argues in a previous post,

It’s an article of faith among hawks that the Pentagon’s assertions that the US goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties are true. I think they’re true to an extent – when planning an offensive operation at leisure, I believe the US generally targets its precision-guided munitions carefully. But I don’t think casualty minimization survives as a priority in the heat of ground operations or the stresses of “peacekeeping.” Force protection, the overriding principle of contemporary American military doctrine, trumps casualty minimization.

A quarter century ago, I learned in my military ethics class that soldiers have a duty to minimize civilian casualties even at the risk of their own lives. We can’t, for example, simply burn down a village with dozens of civilians in it to avoid the risk of getting soldiers killed taking out a sniper. In conventional combat, though, we at least have a situation where identifying the enemy is relatively easy: they wear a different uniform. In counter-insurgency/counter-terrorism, that’s seldom the case. One rather has to presume that a car coming to a checkpoint that isn’t stopping is hostile.

The presumption of which Dauber writes shifts depending on the circumstances. At, for example, a police roadblock in the United States, we would expect the rules of engagement to require the officers’ shooting at the last moment, after having taken heroic measures to get the car to stop otherwise. In a pure war zone, we would expect the soldiers to shoot at the slightest hint of danger. In post-election Iraq, our forces are in a gray zone between war and peace.

Certainly, I support reasonable measures to make the roadblocks more obvious, especially at night. That should include, immediately, a serious media campaign within Iraq to make sure people know what the procedures are. Beyond that, though, I expect the ROE to be set to maximize the safety of our soldiers. If you’re in Iraq and come to a checkpoint manned by uniformed soldiers, you stop. That much should be obvious in any language.

Update (1102): A commenter points me to John Burns’ piece in today’s NYT, “U.S. Checkpoints Raise Ire in Iraq [rss].” It adds strength to my argument above that we need to do a better job of communicating the ROE to ordinary Iraqis.

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.
[...]
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. The spokesman, as well as a senior Pentagon official who discussed the issue in Washington on Sunday, said official statements issued after the Friday shooting offered a broad outline of the rules. In those statements, the military said it tried to slow Ms. Sgrena’s vehicle with hand signals, flashing lights and warning shots before firing into the car’s engine block. But many Iraqis tell of being fired on with little or no warning.

WaPo (”Shootings by U.S. at Iraq Checkpoints Questioned“) has more such incidents.

There is little doubt that young soldiers can get trigger happy. Indeed, during the Gulf War, the decision was made not to allow troops to lock and load their weapons* unless they were expected to be in a firefight because there were incidents of soldiers on guard duty, especially at night, getting a little jumpy and shooting at friendlies.

Still, our troops have been manning checkpoints in Iraq long enough to have smoothed out most of the wrinkles. I’d bet than many of the “no warning” stories are false. Some, undoubtedly, are true.

Don Murphy’s story, “Speeding car can bring life-or-death moment (Seattle Times via CSM),” puts it in a nutshell:

Marine Sgt. Jim Beere knows something about protecting people. Back home he’s an undercover cop in Oakland, Calif., where he works on a special-victims unit tracking rapists and child molesters. He’s usually responsible just for himself and, at most, the safety of a partner. But early on Feb. 22, he saved his own life and quite possibly the lives of a dozen other Marines who were taking a well-deserved catnap after an all-night operation in the city of Hit, 90 miles north of Baghdad. During the same operation, his platoon had killed two unarmed Iraqis who had failed to obey orders to stop. The incidents reveal just how much pressure and how little time troops have to determine whether approaching cars mean them harm.

An undercover cop from Oakland who’s also a Marine sergeant is hardly a kid unaccustomed to high pressure situations. Further, many of the incidents described in all the stories are of innocents who were in fact running checkpoints out of coercion, confusion, fear, or whatever. It’s hard to fault our troops in those cases.

*Instead, we carried live ammunition, loaded in magazines, in the ammunition pouches on our Load Bearing Equipment belts. This meant having 30 rounds fewer on the ready per soldier. It was likely worth that trade-off.

Craig Henry poses an interesting question:

If journalists have to be non-partisan by definition (according to the “bloggers can’t be journalists” school of thought), then why does the press keep referring to Giuliana Sgrena as a journalist? She works for the a nakedly partisan newspaper– Il Manifesto — the voice of the Italian communists. If she is a journalist, isn’t Jeff Gannon?

I’d say Yes to both Sgrena and Gannon. But Craig’s point is a valid one in the sense that many people do include in their definition of “journalism” a requirement of objectivity. Of course, Dan Rather wouldn’t qualify under that definition, either.

Dictionary.com offers the following definition of “journalism:”

jour·nal·ism (jûrn-lzm) n.

1. The collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts.
2. Material written for publication in a newspaper or magazine or for broadcast.
3. The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.
4. Newspapers and magazines.
5. An academic course training students in journalism.
6. Written material of current interest or wide popular appeal.

Sgrena and Gannon both qualify. Interestingly, bloggers (or, for that matter, people who write for Slate and Salon and other online publications) don’t since this definition is based on the medium of presentation.

Italy Rejects U.S. Version of Iraq Shooting (Reuters)

Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena, shot and wounded after being freed in Iraq, said Sunday U.S. forces may have deliberately targeted her because Washington opposed Italy’s policy of dealing with kidnappers. She offered no evidence for her claim, but the sentiment reflected growing anger in Italy over the conduct of the war, which has claimed more than 20 Italian lives, including the secret agent who rescued her moments before being killed.

Friday evening’s killing of the agent and wounding of the journalist, who worked for a communist daily, has sparked tension with Italy’s U.S. allies and put pressure on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to take a hard line with President Bush.

The United States has promised a full investigation into incident, in which soldiers fired on the Italians’ car as it approached Baghdad airport Friday evening. The U.S. military says the car was speeding toward a checkpoint and ignored warning shots, an explanation denied by government ministers and the driver of the car.

Speaking from her hospital bed where she is being treated, Sgrena told Sky Italia TV it was possible the soldiers had targeted her because Washington opposes Italy’s dealings with kidnappers that may include ransom payments. The United States doesn’t approve of this (ransom) policy and so they try to stop it in any way possible.” According to Italy’s leading daily Corriere della Sera, the driver, an unidentified Italian agent, said: “We were driving slowly, about 40-50 km/h (25-30 mph).”

Addendum (0844): Italian Calls U.S. Gunfire Unjustified (WaPo, A18)

An Italian journalist freed from captivity in Iraq said Saturday that a “rain of fire” from a U.S. roadside patrol hit her vehicle as it slowly approached the airport in Baghdad, injuring her and killing an Italian intelligence agent also inside. Her version of events ran counter to the one U.S. officials provided a day earlier. Giuliana Sgrena, wearing a plaid shawl draped around her shoulders, was helped down the steps of an airplane at Rome’s Ciampino airport after arriving from Baghdad Saturday at noon. She later described the shooting and called the U.S. gunfire on the vehicle unjustified. “We weren’t going very fast, given the circumstances. It was not a checkpoint, but a patrol that started firing right after lighting up a spotlight. The firing was not justified by the movement of our automobile,” Sgrena, a reporter for the Communist newspaper Il Manifesto, told Italian investigators, according to an account related by an official who interviewed her at a military hospital.

A statement released Friday by the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad said troops fired because the car was “traveling at high speeds” and “refused to stop at a checkpoint.”

[...]

U.S. officials said the Italians failed to inform military or diplomatic officials that Sgrena was on her way to the airport. Nighttime is particularly dangerous on the airport highway, which has been the scene of numerous car bombings and ambushes of U.S. troops, foreign contractors and other travelers. Berlusconi called in Sembler and demanded that the United States “take responsibility” and acknowledge a “tragic error.” Italian prosecutors are preparing to officially ask the United States for information about the shooting.

(Original) We now have two basic stories.

1. The rescue team, speeding away after their escape from Sgrena’s captors, was rapidly driving toward a U.S. checkpoint. Because of language barriers, adrenaline, fear, darkness, and the fog of war, the driver failed to see or understand the soldiers’ signals. The soldiers, fearing it was a terrorist attack, shot at the vehicle.

2. The U.S. government, irritated because one of its few Iraq War allies in Continental Europe ransomed a hostage, decided to teach them a lesson by staging a massacre, heedless of the inevitable diplomatic fallout.

Which of these seems more plausible?

Update (0833): Amusingly, I just checked my mail and a reader, Jim, had made a very similar observation on my previous post on this issue:

Let’s see there appears to be two major versions of what happened. Let’s see what is more plausible:

1) An Italian car was speeding towards a check-point and the US troops after being subjected to a series of VBIEDs tried to warn the car to slow down and when that failed fired into the vehicle.

2) The CENTCOM was so afraid of this Italian journalist that they issued orders to all the logical checkpoints to shoot-up the car carrying her (assuming they have good intel on the make, color and model). When the car does show up, instead of killing everyone in it, the troops decide to go half-way leaving the target wounded but alive. Then in a sign of incredible disclipine, no one in the entire chain of command tells the press.

Any other theories? (I know the one Air America chose)

Heh.

My piece earlier this morning, “Distorted Coverage of Giuliana Sgrena Shooting,” arguing that the headlines of many major media outlets were misleading because they failed to mention that Sgrena’s car was speeding toward a military checkpoint, drew some negative comments. A few noted that the facts were still in dispute and that the headlines were, therefore, factual.

Here’s another example, from a New York Times story dated tomorrow. It’s headlined, “Italian Reporter Arrives in Rome Amid Questions (rss).” In one sense, the headline is correct. Sgrena is Italian, she’s a reporter, she arrived in Rome, and there were questions. Great headline!

Not so fast. Here’s the story:

Giuliana Sgrena arrived in Rome on Saturday, a day after American troops at a checkpoint in Baghdad fired on the car taking her to the airport following her release from kidnappers. Ms. Sgrena, a 56-year-old journalist for Il Manifesto, a leftist Rome daily, was assisted off the plane in a wheelchair at Rome’s Ciampino airport, where she was greeted by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and her relatives. An ambulance then took her to a military clinic for on operation on her collarbone, where she was hit by shrapnel during Friday night’s shooting, in which an Italian secret service agent, Nicola Calipari, was killed trying to protect her. According to the Italian news agency ANSA, Ms. Sgrena told a friend, “The most difficult moment was when I saw the person who had saved me die in my arms.”

The American military said the car carrying Ms. Sgrena and the Italian agents was speeding to the airport as it approached a checkpoint. Soldiers shot into the engine block after trying to warn the driver to stop by “by hand-and-arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car,” a statement said.

But on Saturday, some members of the Italian opposition, which has fiercely criticized the presence of Italian troops in Iraq, expressed doubt about the American version. “I don’t believe a word the Americans are saying,” said Oliviero Diliberto, a Communist deputy in the lower house of Italy’s Parliament. “I think there is something really dirty about all this business. Next week we will once again propose a measure to pull the troops out of Iraq.”

The Times lede takes as a matter of fact that the shooting occured at a checkpoint. It cites no eyewitness testimony, let alone an account from Sgrena, that disputes that. The only “questions” are from “some members of the Italian opposition” who have an axe to grind. They simply “don’t believe” and “think there is something really dirty.” Based on what? Their reflexive hatred for the American government and their political position on the war.

I wasn’t an eyewitness to the events on the ground and, prior to reading that the incident occured at a checkpoint, I just presumed it was an accident of the type that takes place in a tense war zone on a regular basis. Perhaps information will come to light soon that casts doubt on the American military’s official statements. So far, however, we have no reason whatsoever to “question” it.

Update (1951): A new report from the London Independent, not necessarily the most reliable of sources, tells a different story (careful not to actually attribute it to Sgrena, although giving that impression):

Italian hostage tells of rescuer shielding her from bullets

Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist freed on Friday after a month in captivity in Iraq, was recovering in a military hospital here after taking shrapnel in her shoulder when American troops fired 300 to 400 shots into her car as it approached Baghdad airport. She touched down in Rome yesterday morning and was carried from the aeroplane wrapped in a blanket and attached to a drip, looking haggard and exhausted.

The unprovoked attack killed Nicola Calipari, the Italian military intelligence agent who had negotiated the journalist’s release. He had thrown himself on top of Ms Sgrena to shield her and was killed by a bullet in the head. In a brief conversation with the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, President Bush said he was sorry about the incident and promised that it would be investigated.

The bizarre and bloody end to what should have been a day of joyful celebration occurred at around 9pm as the unmarked car with local plates carrying Ms Sgrena and her liberators approached Baghdad airport. A plane was waiting to take her home. But while the car was still some 600 metres from the terminal, American troops opened fire, unleashing a volley of 300 to 400 shots, killing Mr Calipari outright and wounding Ms Sgrena and the other two intelligence officers in the car, one of them seriously.

It must have been some car, indeed, to withstand 300-400 bullets and yet Sgrena walked away with nothing but a bit of shrapnel in her shoulder. The American account still strikes me as far more plausible.

Update (2114): An anonymous commenter pasted in a story from AGI, minus a link, saying that Sgrena’s partner, Pier Scolari, thinks the shooting was intentional. GoogleNews dates the story from 12 hours ago and provides the link. Most odd, indeed. I don’t know AGI’s reputation, much less Scolari’s, but certainly find their account ridiculously improbable.

Update (2232): A BBC account has Sgrena’s take on it. It’s less conspiratorial:

Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena has described how she came under a “hail of gunfire” moments after being released from her Iraqi abductors in Baghdad. Ms Sgrena, who was wounded in the incident, has been sent to a military hospital in Rome for an operation. She denied US military accounts that the car was speeding past a checkpoint when it was fired upon.
[...]
“There was suddenly this shooting, we were hit by a hail of gunfire, and I was speaking with Nicola, who was telling me about what had been happening in Italy in the meantime, when he leaned towards me, probably also to protect me,” Ms Sgrena told Rai radio. “I was especially shocked because we thought that by then the danger was past,” she said. “And then he collapsed and I realised that he was dead.”

She said the shooting continued “because the driver wasn’t even managing to explain that we were Italian”. “So, it was a really terrible thing.”

Asked if the car was going too fast when the US troops opened fire, she said: “We weren’t going particularly fast given that type of situation.”

Update (3-6 0836): See followup story, “Italy Rejects U.S. Version of Sgrena Shooting.”

Even though the fact that the car Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was in was running through a checkpoint at high speed when she was shot has been out for hours, the headlines are still misportraying the incident:

• After surviving U.S. shooting, journalist arrives in irate Italy (USA Today)
• GIs wound just-freed Italian hostage (SF Chronicle)
• U.S. Forces Wound Freed Italian Hostage, Kill Officer (Bloomberg)

Apparently, the misperception is driving reality:

• Italian press shocked by shooting (BBC)
• Bush orders inquiry into US shooting of freed journalist (Sydney Morning Herald)
• US vows to probe hostage shooting (Scotsman)

Amazing.

Update (0858): The best one yet:

• U.S.-Italy Relations Chilled by Killing of Reporter (Reuters)

The. Reporter. Was. Not. Killed.

Update (1853): See “Questions in Giuliana Sgrena Shooting” for a follow-up.

U.S. Fires on Freed Journalist (Fox News – AP)

A freed Italian hostage was injured and an Italian secret service agent killed Friday after a U.S. armored vehicle fired on a car in which they were riding in Iraq, two Italian news agencies reported. The Apcom and ANSA news agencies said that Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter for the communist daily Il Manifesto, was in a hospital in Iraq with a shoulder injury. The shooting occurred at a roadblock while the car was heading to the airport, the reports said.

Talk about your bad luck.

Rusty Shackleford has the background for those who didn’t realize she’d been captured in the first place.

Update: Rusty and Michelle Malkin point out a minor omission from the AP report than The fact that the car in question was speeding toward an American checkpoint. MSNBC adds:

The U.S. military said the car was speeding as it approached a coalition checkpoint in western Baghdad at 8:55 p.m. It said soldiers shot into the engine block only after trying to warn the driver to stop by “hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and firing warning shots.”

Talk about your stupid.