Mike Malone announced the url for Il Manifesto. I googled it, but found that website wasn’t easy to navigate, so I went to another on the google search. This one is very straightforward.
I’m posting the entire first post, b/c it contains links to Giuliana Sgrena’s reports.
The post under it is a letter from Naomi Klein to “David T Johnson, Acting ambassador, US Embassy, London, regarding the open and deliberatetargetting of civilians, such as Doctors, Clerics and Journalists, by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
I have never felt so helpless and ashamed in my life.
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
March 6, 2005
“A few facts to consider:
1. The agent who was killed died while shielding Sgrena with his own body, according to Reuters < http://www.political-news.org/breaking/7263/body-of-slain-it
alian-agent-gets-heros-welcome.html >. “He leaned over me, probably to protect me, and then he slumped down, and I saw he was dead,” she said. This could mean one of two things: Either the agent was reacting as trained to the gunfire and was protecting his principle, or he saw that she was the target of the fire.
- Pier Scolari, companion to Sgrena, has stated the attack was deliberate, according to Agence France Presse < http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=38029 >. “The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming,” Scolari said. “They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints. Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive.”
- The chief editor of Sgrena’s newspaper Il Manifesto, Gabriele Polo, branded Calipari’s death a “murder”. “He was hit in the head,” he said.
- For a journalist like Sgrena to be deliberately targeted, a motive would have to exist. An examination of the work she was doing in Iraq, particularly about the annihilation of Fallujah, makes it clear that she was disbursing information the U.S. military and civilian command structure do not want widely known.
A few examples of her reports:
Ten thousand Iraqis in US and British prisons
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/420dc2e2c4e2d.html
Napalm Raid on Falluja?
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/420dd721e0ff0.html
The death throes of Fallujah
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/420dc44c4d41d.html
Interview with an Iraki woman tortured at Abu Graibù
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/420dc5a37ba4d.html
A longer and more detailed examination of these allegations has been written by Luciana Bohne at Online Journal < http://www.onlinejournal.com/Media/021205Bohne/021205bohne.h
tml >. Give that article a careful read.”
Another Journalist Deliberately Targeted? William Pitt, March 6, 2005
http://forum.truthout.org/blog/story/2005/3/6/114241/5457
For the Naomi Klein letter and more, click:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m10188&date=07-mar-2005_05:26_ECT
The other post with this title is incompete & I couldn’t figure out how to delete it. It’s not a double post.
x, a short note: I’d really been on the fence about this story. Your post and Naomi Klein’s letter affected me (I hope everyone follows your link and reads her letter). … keep on this, please.
I think every day I cannot be more outraged and yet word has become almost meaningless as this all becomes so far beyond outrage.
Quiet desparation and despair are quite literally something I drag around everyday now. Anyone who knows anything of the history of this country and the history of our government know that we are not always the good guys,(often even the bad guys) especially depending on who is in power in the Whitehouse and Congress. Yet collectively the country seemed to try and strive for an ideal while failing often but going on to remedy problems even if they were way way overdue.(as the civil rights movement, era amendment, etc) Not that we’ve come that close on those problems either I don’t believe.
The war in Iraq seems to have unleashed the a corruption of ideals we are not going to recover from. When most of the public can sit around and discuss torture matter of factly or for any reason we seem to have lost the soul of the country.
I think I shall go to bed and hope my dreams are not in the netherworld where nightmares will come to taunt me with bodies of children and broken soldiers with broken minds.
Indeed. All is not lost yet, half of americans do not condone these atrocities, & our numbers are growing. I love Mike Malloy, & his wailing outrage, & Mark Marin, Al Franken & Jeaneane Garafolo…the whole Air America phenom gives me hope. I laugh, I cry, I get the word out.
& the blogs are filling my head with truth, my heart with determination, & my soul with fire. We know things rapidly now. They can’t hide.
Sweet dreams, c i. I believe we will prevail.
I feel the same way, BUT you have to remember what the above poster said, and think about the meaning.
The power structure in DC sucks right now, but I think Americans are waking up. American intelligence always seems to move in cycles. We have the fed to (in theory) smooth out the economic cycles, but we don’t have a psychological tweaking department (and I’m glad for it).
So, hopefully America will wake up, or at least a few percent will, and then we can take back the Congress in 2006. Then, Bush is fuxored. Dare to dream!
it isn’t even approaching a parody that we slowly have morphed into the kind of nation that we were supposedly saving the rest of the world from — it is not that we have become orwellian — that s far too literate and easy a comparison. it is more that we have embraced the slovenly, “listen to me, pay no attention to what you see” mantra that was embraced lock-stock-and barrel when we chose to elect reagan instead of re-electing a very decent human rights champion. our thresh hold for disgrace has yet to be achieved, and i am sadly awaiting the event that finally brings our bloated arrogance and narcissism back to center. imho, one of the most enduring tragedies of 9-11 is that we did not learn from it, we bastardized its impact to legitimize our international swagger and disregard for humanity. those in power now care nothing for those who get hurt because of their hubris — as they live i a world where they never have to pay the price for the sins they commit.
sorry to be so depressing, but the journalist’s bodyguard who died for her — that just is so beyond the pale that real heroes exist and we are the country that is shooting them.
This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. What a succinct analogy.
I would like to defend the troops at the check points for what they did. Troops without information will defend themselves.
There is no way that the hostage release information was not shared with the American commanders. The Officers did not share the information with the troops. Soldiers in a combat zone are going to defend themselves from an unknown vehicle and the troops at the checkpoints did that.
The culpability for the killing starts at least at the Iraq Command HQ if not all the way to the State Department and Pentagon.
my first ever recommended diary. bet that never happens again lol!