HELIOLITH

I instant messaged with a friend in Italy after the shooting of Nicola Calipari, the Italian secret service officer who died by taking bullets? shrapnel? a single round to the temple while heroically throwing his body over Giuliana Sgrena’s. She is the Italian journalist who had just been released from being a hostage for a month and was on her way to the airport. She is quoted in the Guardian article as saying, ‘The hardest moment was when I saw the person who had saved me die in my arms.” A moving account from her editor’s point of view at Il Manifesto can be read here.

My friend was of the opinion, based on much of the Italian coverage, that the Americans had, “…tried to kill all of them,” and that, “it was not an accident.” As much as this could easily become a meme for conspiracy theorists, my Italian friend is not (in my impression) very political, and I think the perception among Italians that this wasn’t an accident is more widespread than here at home where (as he points out) we are more sheltered from U.S. critical media. Il Manifesto, the leftist newspaper Sgrena works for has already decried the death of Calipari as murder. Granted, they are very critical of the United States’ presence in Iraq in the first place, and highly suspicious the U.S. war on journalism, or the one that many have alleged occurs. If you have seen the excellent documentary “Control Room” about Al-Jazeera, you will know about their journalist whom they believe was purposefully targetted and shot to death while covering the war from a rooftop. Robert Stribley mentions the movie here.

On the other side, there are of course a host of right-wing sites (who I won’t sanctify with links) that chalk off anything but the official Pentagon version of the story as commie-propaganda, and “anti-americanism.” A CNN story reminds us of the rules of engagment the military is operating under: “Rules of engagement permit coalition troops to use escalating levels of force if they feel threatened. They can use lethal force, for example, if a car refuses to stop for a checkpoint.” Which is to say that soldiers, often young and inexperienced, can err. This is one possible explanation; a probable explanation for this family that was massacred at another US roadblock in Iraq six and a half weeks ago.

I wonder how deeply the situation will be investigated, and whether we will ever know the truth. Bush has of course, promised the Italians a full investigation (Berlusconi, their president often described as somewhat of a Bush yes-man), but his idea of a full-investigation is a crock; we know how deeply the government looked into the abuses at Abu-Ghraib, a situation that Sgrena also reported on.

From Philip Willan Rome’s Guardian story:

Enzo Bianco, the opposition head of the parliamentary committee that oversees Italy’s secret services, described the American account as unbelievable. ‘They talk of a car travelling at high speed, and that is not possible because there was heavy rain in Baghdad and you can’t travel at speed on that road,’ Bianco said. ‘They speak of an order to stop, but we’re not sure that happened.’

Rome contrasts the soldiers’ story: (they were speeding, and warned to stop which they didn’t) with Sgrena’s side of the story:

The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle. Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded Italians, the soldiers’ first move was to confiscate their weapons and mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome for more than an hour.

The blogging and media world seems ablaze right now with stories of Sgrena/Calipari, and I’m just beginning to sift through it all. Sometimes I think that the relatively cohesive and more politically grounded atmosphere in the EU may be just what it takes to call the US on its bumbling of foreign policy. While Sgrena’s partner Pier Scolari is accusing the U.S. of a flat out assasination attmpt on Sgrena, (via the Guardian and Dean’s World) I can’t quite see how if they were in U.S. custody (without cellphone contact) for an hour after the shooting, why if they had wanted Sgrena dead they wouldn’t have simply shot her (with all due respect to you Ms. Sgrena). Unless of course the incident was a means of intimidating, with flat-out assassination either unplanned or failed to be carried out correctly (it’s hard to kill an innocent unarmed woman face-to-face).

Let me be absolutely clear: I feel we should consider all of the possibilities, and not jump to any conclusion. I don’t wish to spread a conspiratorial meme for its own sake, but there is one path from confusion to truth, and one needs to accept all reasonable possibilities until more facts come to light.

Perhaps it’s hard for people with strong feelings for the war not to tend to see this story one way or another. The reality of why someone was killed isn’t clear at all, although many theories are being made to explain it.

UPDATE: Since I’ve been going over the coverage for this story the better part of the day, new stories have just been released, where Giuliana Sgena seems inclined to believe that she was the target.

Via AP/ CanadaTV: CTV (Canada)
“The fact that the Americans don’t want negotiations to free the hostages is known,” Sgrena told Sky TG24 television by telephone. “The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostages, everybody knows that. So I don’t see why I should rule out that I could have been the target.”
They also report that, “Sgrena recounts that she suddenly remembered a warning from her captors : ‘To be careful because the Americans don’t want you to return.’”

Also via yahoo/ap here,

With sincerest respect to the family and friends of Nicola Calipari, who is being mourned across the world for his courage and honor.