Giuliana Sgrena update

U.S. troops who mistakenly killed an Italian intelligence agent last week on the road to Baghdad's international airport were part of extra security provided by the U.S. Army to protect U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, a U.S. official said Thursday.

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Senior U.S. officials such as the ambassador, who is by far seen as the most important American in Iraq, normally travel by helicopter to avoid roadside bombs and insurgent attacks along the airport road, which are frequent. But U.S. officials in Iraq often vary travel routes and methods so as not to be predictable.

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The Army has acknowledged the checkpoint was temporary but has provided no details about why it was set up.

The day after the March 4 shooting, a spokesman for the 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad, U.S. Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, said the checkpoint where the shooting occurred had been set up temporarily and wasn't permanent.

Asked at the time about how easy it would be to see American troops at such a checkpoint at night, he said: "Depending on where it is, that could be difficult. But if you're seeing soldiers in military uniform with military equipment, if you know it's a dangerous area, then ... you need to maintain your awareness."
  Editor & Publisher article

American reporters are having a grand time headlining Giuliana as a commie. And apparently the right wingnuts are jumping on with both feet. I'm sure they were screaming well before the press.

Now we are [...] lectured at by people with contempt for the "reality based community". The whole of method in their little world is to start with their preferred conclusion and work backwards sticking little bits of confirmation to it like epistemic Post-It notes while crumpling and discarding everything else.

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Observation? Hypothesis? The process of reality checking that informally goes by common sense and formally forms the basis of the scientific method? Fuck no, that might make the baby Jesus cry. What you do is start off with something you want to believe or, in the case of our professional wing nut pundit class, that you are paid to make other people believe, and break the legs of every observation that comes your way in order to fit it into your conceptual box. There's a big difference between "walking back" an event and working backwards from a predetermined conclusion.

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This is why the current pile-on of Giuliana Sgrena by the scalp hunting right wing circle jerkers is particularly appalling. Since it is not clear what exactly happened to the car carrying the Italian journalist to freedom, as one side isn't really talking and parties on the other side are either traumatized or dead, throwing around terms like liar and fabrication are more than irresponsible, they are a big red flag that a political agenda divested from actual thought is at work. That's aside from the fact that this is the same righty punditry that got up in arms over the supposed mind-reading ability of critics that accused George W. Bush of lying in the lead up to the war in Iraq when he was, in fact, lying in the same way that the Hindenburg burned: A lot.

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Also, remember that impugning a witness with a sucking chest wound would be considered poor taste were she not a perceived enemy of the glorious democracy-seeding empire. Of course, for some strange reason there's a lack of people from the 101st Fighting Keyboarders and other eager young Freepers joining up and shipping off to Iraq, so we have no way to compare how well a wing nut can tell a story after being shot a couple times.
  Rev. Mykeru post

Click here for a short list of some of the articles Giuliana was writing for Il Manifesto, along with an interview in that same paper with Jimmy Massey, a discharged Marine who tells what's expected of the troops in Iraq.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.