Posted on 03/07/2005 9:21:02 PM PST by SandRat
The claims of an Italian journalist who says U.S. troops shot her for no reason after she was released by terrorist kidnappers on Friday keep getting wilder and wilder.
Now Giuliana Sgrena, who writes for the anti-American newspaper Il Manifesto, insists that U.S. forces used a tank to gun her and her entourage down.
"A tank started to shoot at us without any sign or any light," Sgrena maintained to reporters on Monday. "It was not a checkpoint, so I can't explain it." She also hinted that U.S. forces deliberately targeted her, saying that they had been told she and her rescuers were on their way.
"Our car was driving slowly," and "the Americans fired without motive," she wrote in a report for Il Manifesto on Sunday.
U.S. military spokesmen have admitted that troops fired on Sgrena's car, but did so only because it was trying to run a military checkpoint, but that no tanks were involved in the incident.
I can hear it now with Monty Python tone...they carpet bombed me! You don't look carpet bombed. I got better.
What does Stern mean.
ok...whats it going to be tomorrow? An F-16 fired a few missles at her as well?
I love it when they tell lies so big they fall into them.
Even now, commies are groaning "shut yer stupid piehole" because she just cut the legs out from under her own propaganda.
so what's the word from the actual driver?
isn't he also an Italian Intelligence agent?
I don't think he'd lie for the commie broad.
That's how we know they are lying their lips are moving.
The blast from the gun knocked the car into the air where it glanced off the underside of a B-2...
There were ither people in the car.
I too wonder why no one besides Little Miss Stalin has spoken out.
ither=other
From the NY Times:
A senior Defense Department official in Washington said Monday that the checkpoint the Italians' car was approaching consisted of two barriers across the road, but the official could not say what the barriers were made of, how large they were or whether they were permanent or temporary. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said two Army Humvees had been parked near the checkpoint, but apparently not on the road itself.
Another senior Pentagon official reiterated the military's initial statement that the Italians' car had been traveling at high speed. Ms. Sgrena has said her car was traveling slowly when she and her colleagues came under fire.
The Pentagon official did not offer new details on the incident, but suggested that the Italians' car had not responded to soldiers' hand signals, flashing lights and warning shots - steps the official said soldiers would have taken to warn the car to stop. "There were any number of cars passing through that checkpoint that night," said the second official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. "They fired on that car for a reason."
From the military blog:
An Italian journalist/hostage, who was recently freed by the insurgents, was riding in a car on her way to the Baghdad Airport. Her driver failed to stop at a Coalition traffic control point (TCP), and she was shot. Another person in the vehicle was killed. There are big signs at TCP's, saying "All vehicles must stop." There are red flashing lights, glow sticks, and Soldiers with white flashlights. There are concrete barriers and razor wire. The American and Coalition Soldiers who man TCPs are trained to use graduated levels of force to stop those who try to run TCP's. This is to guard against people with cars full of explosives, who drive right up to sensitive areas and detonate their cargo. Some drivers, even without explosives, will simply ram their cars into our guys. How were they to know who was in this car? All they knew is that there was a car speeding toward them, and it wasn't responding to the various warnings that were in place.
I don't know the Soldiers who did the shooting. But I have seen a few of their sworn statements. And while I can't comment specifically on the investigation, my impression is that there is nothing abnormal in the way these Soldiers did their jobs. Why the driver didn't stop -- or even slow down -- at the TCP is beyond me.
Likely engine parts.
She was hardly hurt. They did not fire into the body of the car, just the engine.
A 7.62 would do it as well.
Her comment from earlier were even funnier when she said she was picking up bullets that were everywhere.
Another leftist craving attention, like that university prof who trashed her own car.
How should I Know? Ask Burma Shave
Next month the story will be that Americans lured her into a time vortex that leads to the Battle of the Somme in WWI. She was then forced to wait until Lenin died. She managed to sneak into his masoleum and there hid in his coffin, where she was preserved to the present day.
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