Slashdot Mirror
Copy-and-Paste Reveals Classified U.S. Documents
cyclop writes "In March, U.S. troops in Iraq shot to death Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence agent that rescued the kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena. U.S. commission on the incident produced a report which public version was censored for more than one third. Now Italian press is reporting that all confidential information in the report is available to the public, just by copying "hidden" text from the PDF and pasting it in a word processor (Italian). The uncensored report can now be directly downloaded (evil .DOC format, sorry)"
This happened before with an astroturfed Microsoft "Switch" campaign, among others, IIRC.
That gives the term "security by obscurity" a whole new meaning... Hidden text?! What were they thinking!
Interesting the the people that posted this don't point out any smoking guns. It's mildly interesting that they were able to thwart the ridiculously inane classified protections, but it's telling that they didn't find anything that further incriminated the U.S. service personnel.
It's unfortunate but if you choose to negotiate with kidnappers (and thereby encourage more kidnapping) and further don't tell someone who's subject to daily suicide car bombs that you're going to be speeding down a road that is infamous for daily suicide car bombs, is it any surprise this happened?
Should I expect less if I make jerky motions into my pockets when a police officer pulls me over for a routine traffic accident?
But it was distributed. Just not shown. It you pass around a pack of papers and put one you hope nobody will look for at the bottom, can you really be upset when someone grabs exactly that sheet?
My guess is that it's going to be the staffer that released the document that's in hot water.
There might actually have been respectable and perhaps important reasons for redacting some of that information. Not that it matters now, but it seems a bit imprudent to fervishly publicize information about troops that could have serious ramifications for them.
I know it never pays to underestimate human stupidity.
But non the less - I wonder if people can really be this stupid. Perhaps making people think they accessed confidential information is just a trick so the report seems more believeale.
In March, U.S. troops in Iraq shot to death Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, who was travelling in a car that - according to US troops - refused to slow down for a coalition checkpoint.
It's illegal to knowingly download classified docs, I trust you will do the right thing.
I, for one, will do my duty as a citizen and read the document. Living in a state in europe, I will look if there is any information in it that might be vital to my countries existance and then do the right thing - which might even include distributing the document to others.
Obligitory opening post to start the major flame/anti-flame thread. So the topic is:
Why the hell would slashdot post something that seems pretty darn illegal on the front of their site?
If it's not illegal, it's just plain irresponsible. I recognize that the folks who run Slashdot are often characterized as kids with no journalistic integrity, but come on...
Classified?
Have you read it?
The original document says "UNCLASSIFIED" just on top of every page.
Speaking as a veteran of the US Military, I can tell you that the logistical information chopped from that report will put soldier's lives at risk. Details of procedures, troop sizes, movements - and enemy intelligence reports *should* remain classified.
Way to go media. YOU SUCK.
It appears that this all boils down to a blame game - the US wants to defend its soldiers and assign blame to the Italians for not sharing information, whereas the Italians want the American soldiers held responsible for what is, essentially, a tragic circumstance in a war zone.
The Italians in the car weren't expecting a roadblock at that location, and the Americans didn't know about the rescue operation that was in progress...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Since when is breaking the law morally wrong? The reason the US has guns is so that its citizents can break unjust laws and defent themselves from an unreasonable government. There is nothing "wrong" with breaking the law, and I wish peopld would start realizing that.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
"If it was me, I would have shot the car. It was clearly speeding towards their position."
It was? That's what not surprisingly those who shot claim, however I have seen no prove of that claim yet, and the other side is telling a different story.
"The driver was not paying attention."
He wasn't? Proof? And of course, see comment above.
"He had a spotlight and a laser pointer shined on them."
He did? Proof? And of course, see comment above.
"They supposedly had the windows down in the car to hear for threats."
They did? Proof? And of course, see comment above.
"They were going in excess of 50mph, and the driver admits he was not in the habit of checking his speed."
They were? Proof? And of course, see comment above.
Seriously, and some Americans wonder why others might not like the US? I don't say it was the soldiers fault and the Italians didn't do what you claim, I simply don't know, what I do know however is that the US' urge to deny any wrongdoing whatsoever, no matter what, acting as if the facts in this case were totally clear, though they clearly aren't, is deeply disgusting and doesn't endear the US to the Europeans and others.
So, if you are wondering once again why some people don't like you, just look at the parents comments, at similar comments already made here, that also were modded up and you might just get a hint about why there is a lot of Anti-Americanism in the world.
Does anyone who speaks Army jargon know what this is all saying, or can someone at least point out the salient points?
Like... what about those allegations that the Italians had paid several million Euros as ransom to the kidnappers?
Kids, I know you want your people back--I'm sorry, but your hostages are already dead. Mourn for them, but don't pay off their kidnappers. That's stupid. That's Reagan-stupid. Ten million bucks buys a lot more kidnappings and suicide bombs.
You'd think we'd have learned this lesson by now.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
As an american living in Italy, we've seen a lot of coverage of this over here.
The Italians involved said they weren't speeding. The Americans said the vehicle was travelling too quickly.
I think anyone, italian or american, can figure out the reason for this disagreement by watching a cowering family of american tourists trying to cross the street in Rome or any other large italian city. Some people obviously have different ideas about what 'fast' or 'dangerous' driving is.
I like Italy in many ways, but sometimes I really have to agree with Bill Bryson's "never should have let the Italians in on the invention of the automobile" sometimes!
Well, now we'll see, won't we?
The US government has for a long time, and this adiminstration in particular, classified things reflexively, whether secrecy was actually required or not.
In many ways it'll be scarier if the redactions show nothing of interest at all: not protecting anybody's privacy or any actual secrets. (A quick scan suggests exactly that.) It leaves open the question, "Why is the government keeping that information secret? Why is the government keeping so much information secret?"
There are many things that people would like to know to keep an eye on their government. Not all of that information should be released, for national security reasons, but it's always been the government who makes that decision. This lack of a check on the power of government makes people increasingly nervous as crimes (e.g. Abu Ghraib) are discovered anyway.
Most people in government over-classify things in order to protect their jobs. It's not a crime to overclassify; it's a big crime to release national security info, even accidentally. That's understandable, but a failure to release information that people are allowed to know makes it extremely difficult to check up on what the government does and whether it is still acting in our interest.
So yeah, maybe this is a bad thing. Maybe this is a release of national security information and lives may be lost. Or maybe it's laziness, somebody redacting because it's easier than checking on whether or not it was OK to release. Now we'll find out, and perhaps gain some broader insight.
She's a communist, she's written extensively for Il Manifesto and has made a lot of statements underlining her political affiliation & beliefs.
That said, there's nothing wrong with being a leftist, and it's irrelevant to this case (except that, of course, she's using her platform & beliefs to put a pretty massive spin on things.) Saying "the communist reporter" is similar to stating "the black assailant."
In this case it's just a horrible, possibly avoidable tragedy and I'm sure everyone involved really really sorry it happened, not that that helps.
As for the idiots saying things like "if soldiers don't want to get blown up, they should stay the f*** out of Iraq", that's about as base, nonsensical, ill-informed and sad an attitude as I can think of, and simply not deserving of a response.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Oh, get real. It's difficult to know what really happened, and whether the soldiers made a mistake or whether it was simply a terrible tragedy, but if the soldiers had wanted that woman dead, there would be nothing left of her, the car, or any of the other occupants besides a smoking crater.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence".
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Who said anything about justification? the post just rightly corrected that there was no "rescuing", it was just a pickup and go operation.
yeah. you're a journalist, you have been detained for weeks, you've been saved, you think you're going home, someone shoot your car, the man who freed you is killed, his head explodes in front of you, you are wounded, you are in shock, and you should count the number of shots?
anonymous, you're just an asshole
I suppose it would't be too hard to twist the DMCA into "protecting" hidden text as a security/DRM mechanism and calling this action "circumvention". The main problem is that our technology has outgrown 90% of the human race. Another example of this kind of thinking is on the moblog site, yafro.com. There are tons of women who post nude photos of themselves in their accounts. Much like Slashdot, there is a friends/foes type system. If you and another person are mutually in a friend relation, then you can see their "locked" pictures. So... when a few jackasses decided to mutually friend some of the Yafro women, take their locked photos and post them in a public forum on Yafro (a club), these women flipped out. They griped about how they were entitled to their privacy and it had been violated. They're right as far as ethics and respect go. But, this is the internet. Anything you place on it can't be expected to be private or protected in any fashion. If someone wants the info bad enough, they are going to get it.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
So, what's a good new name for pizza that includes a word like "freedom?".
Guantanamo Bay which is outside US judicial juristiction apparently.
I think you mean Sgrena, not Calipari. I mean, you're absolutely correct in stating that Calipari is not a reliable witness, but that would be because he's, y'know, dead.
Why don't you check your facts. Calipari was the killed agent. The person you are talking about is Giuliana Sgrena.
And some references to some unreleased "satellite photos" aren't really credible source of information especially after US has been caught in blatant lying about WMD evidence and about torture in Guantanamo, Afganistan and in Iraq.
I think this incidence shows how trigger happy and uncompetent the US troops are. There is no question that if the Italians had know they were in danger of US troops they would have stopped. But evidently the troops aren't able to warn in a clear and understandable way the car's that are aproaching their checkpoints -- and so innocent people get killed all the time in Iraq. This is just one case that has gotten much attention as the passangers were Italians instead Iraqis.
They should arrange their roadblocks with clear warnings - and preferrable also with physical blocks, using tire puncturing blocks etc. Adn they could maintain large enough distance to their roadblocks that they wouldn't feel so threatened thaty they have to shoot first and ask later.
C'mon think 1 second of another alternative.
.DOC format, I'd tend to think that seeing how US military failed in terms of preparation and casulties in Irak, but this would be also too big (someone would get charged for something really huge, and normally someone having access to this type of document as source to encode them, isn't a total idiot and has been checked up. Plus, there's surely a procedure on how to make documents and etc. there).
:) )
It's really sad to see this much "nerds" falling into the easiest route from point a to b without even considering any other possibilities.
How about this: They don't have a clue on how to get to the heads of the insurgency, thus they can't send them bad information, in which case they "do an error that looks legit" and broadcast it abroad knowing every news agency and curious person on the planet will pick it up.
Disinformation is a powerful thing. and even if the troops movements and all kind of information is included in the text, maybe there's one point there that they know that could be set up as a trap or whatever.
I mean, it's easy to jump to conclusions that humanity is stupid because someone revealed information, and the military knows nothing about the evil
So the point is, I could be wrong, the gun-jumpers could be wrong, but one thing is right; there are ALWAYS other possible alternatives to something obvious, especially when it's military or political. A forum like this is not to say "ahh bad bad bad" and see 500 messages of bitching on bad bad bad, but rather to promote a certain level of dicussion and intelligible arguments.
My $0.02CDN (which isn't worth much
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
- The world hates George Bush and the Republicans because
- The Republicans and George Bush hate and have no respect for the rest of the world. The Republicans have such friendly ideas as to disband the U.N.; have the U.S. completely withdraw from the U.N.; move the U.N. headquarters out of NYC;
make the U.N. a U.S.A. puppet (John Bolton is for the latter).
As the sayin goes, with friends like these who needs enemies?You just have to look at how George Bush treats fellow Americans called Democrats to understand the level of contempt and hate that exists for the outside world as well. As an American, if you want to go to a George Bush Town Hall meeting you have to sign a paper of loyalty. You have to ask yourself why that is?
In my opinion the bigger story here was how the U.S. handled diplomacy. Obviously the answer is poorly, arrogantly and with a strong middle finger salute to the Italians. This is no different then the diplomacy of Fox News, AM Hate Radio, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Laura Ingram and all the rest of the right wing giving their fellow Americans called Democrats the finger 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. Ultimately all the hatred and contempt the right heaps on the left will end in violence.
Whoever Bush appoints to the U.N. will be expected to behave similarly; waive arrogantly a strong John Bolton middle finger salute to the rest of the world as well.
The government is secretive about everything so that the public comes to expect secrecy as the norm, and will thus be more complacent and undemanding of transparency in cases where there really might be a cover-up.
If the government had a general policy of keeping things in the open whenever possible, then at those times when they really want to cover something up, they'd have a much harder time of it, because (a) the public would expect and demand more transparency, as the 'norm' and (b) the public would realise there "must actually be a cover-up this time" in cases where secrecy is applied, because the secrecy would be far more unusual.
So it's better for the government to just generally say to everyone all the time, "hey, we're the government, everything we do is secret and the public should have no expectation of knowing any of it". This way they can do anything they like.
I really hate the way that Americans often seem to lose their sanity the minute the word "communist" is mentioned, since it seems like such a knee jerk reflex, especially since the cold war ended around 15 years ago. However, I think that Sgrena's attitude toward the US was probably not the most favourable, as I can't imagine a European communist paper employing a giddy yay america type person. While communist papers and parties in Europe are dinosaurs, as not many are interested in them, I think that the general view of the US in Europe has nothing to do with being communist or not.
Living here myself, I simply see European attitudes as being one's of suspicion and disbelief at the rhetoric and actions of the current US government.
However, a lot of Europeans are just as supicious of their own governments as these are just as opaque in the way they do things.
If not then all the comments regarding right and wrong of the insidence and its exposure is genuinely without a just foundation.
When shit hits the fan.... its splatters everywhere.
Better to identify the party who thru the shit at the fan in the first place. Rather than argueing over who got hit or not.
Well, they were rogue US employees. So a case could be made that the US law applied to them too.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
> Many Italians believe that her car was
> deliberately fired upon because of her politics.
If that were the case, why is she still alive?
> Note that the US has refused to the Italians
> see the car.
Really? Since the Italians have had the car in their possession (now in Rome), how is it the U.S. is able to refuse the Italians to see it?
Try reading a newspaper once in a while.
>...my quickie conclusion: because of the obvious
> discrepencies, the refusal to show the car,
See above
> the unexplained motivation to keep this material
> secret,
So in addition to not being able to read a newspaper, you are also completely lacking of common sense?
Military tactics are very often classified (why tell the enemy how you operate).
So if the United States government conducted a massacre of thousands of US citizen's, then made the documents leading up to the decision classified, and you came across those documents. It would be 'wrong' for you to download and read them?
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
No, in fact it is rented from Cuba (even though they refuse the payment) and the U.S. government's position is that it is therefore foreign soil and not subject to U.S. laws or Constitution.
"They were captured in disguise and according to the laws of warfare could be summarily executed as spies."
While it's nice to refer to what the actual laws and interpretations allow, you miss the most important point: they have no due process rights. As you state, they have no Geneva Convention protection, even though they were captured as "the enemy" in a war. They are also not protected by the U.S. Constitution (see above link) because they are considered on foreign soil, even though they were captured by Americans, are being held by Americans, and are on an American base. In short, they have no protected rights for due process that civilized nations provide to everyone including war criminals, enemy soldiers, and civilian criminals.
Some people may not care. After all, these are terrorists, right? Well, how do we know? Is the military infallable? Is every accused person guilty? That's what due process is for. Is this not the "absolute power" behaviour that pissed off American's enough to create the U.S. in the first place, and provide such basic protections to all people?
This is a sad and unfortunate incident.
I don't care about any political bearings of any of the players. Only of those involved and their saftey.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. That can be agreed on. It is also a shame and that can be agreed on too.
Honestly you do NOT mess around in a situation like this. As a soldier you can't just say "Oh look at that speeding car lets see what they want". You have to take action and it sounds to me like procedure was followed to the best of ability.
Communication could have been better.
The driver could have been smarter.
The vehicles shouldn't have been moved. Though I'm glad they were as more could have died.
That can be agreed on. Well no cause it doesn't matter because Americans are at fault automatically.
Just think about this. She was released. Why the need for any urgency?
The one thing I think everyone missed is this:
Sgrena claimed that her kidnappers, just before releasing her, had warned her that the American forces would be a danger to her.
Perhaps she had some form of Stockholm Syndrome and caused the driver to react differently when the warning shots happened?
Why on earth would the Americans want to intentionally harm her? Oh that's right the kidnappers said so so it must be true.
If that is true why then was medical treatment given to her and those involved as a priority over all else?
Anyway...
You know people are nitpicking when you read things like:
Giuliana Sgrena was hit, in the shoulder according to the U.S. version, but in an upper limb, according to Italian journalists.
So they already have an axe to grind. Eventually the truth will come out though no one will want to hear it. Both sides were at fault.
You're just a repressed coincidence theorist. Let's see: a group of high government officials go out of power with the change in party control. They publish a detailed plan for invading Iraq for unilateral strategic reasons, noting that without other justification, they'll need a "Pearl Harbor" scale event to invade. A decade later, they return to their old offices when their party retakes the White House. A few months later, a Pearl Harbor scale event occurs. The officials claim falsely that the event is connected to Iraq, and invade.
That's not very complicated. Every part is public knowledge all along. It is deluded people like you, who won't accept the truth, who enable the outrageous acts of these evil officials. Your kind of zombie is easy to identify: you can't dispute the facts, or the simple logic, so you attack the messenger with rhetoric and extreme exaggeration. I hope you're enjoying Bush's America, composed of lies, hatred, war, poverty, and rapid decline. Maybe you'll get a date with one of the Bush twins!
--
make install -not war
Secret / Noforn means only US Citizens with a current Secret clearance and a certified need to know can read it. If you have no security clearance and no legitimate need to know, you're not supposed to have access to even FOUO (for official use only) or confidential documents, which are lower classifications of documents. Even if you have a secret clearance and are a US citizen, if you have no need to know, you also can not have access to the documents.
When I dealt with Secret Noforn documents, they were locked in a safe that was locked inside a room. They had to be shredded into little tiny squares or burned.
Certainly a crime has been committed by the government officials who released this in PDF form. Whoever decided that a PDF was secure enough to release S/NF needs to be prosecuted. This is unacceptable.
they don't realize that what they're looking at isn't just an image with the stuff painted over but black strips overlaid on top of the complete document
In a secure environment it shouldn't be *possible* to make that mistake. You don't just 'load an electronic version to send it off to people' when you're talking about classified documents.
Someone is going to get seriously busted for this.
Laws are only formal statements of the current morals of a society. What's morally acceptable today is atrocious tomorrow, and vice versa. Look at the rise and fall of slavery in the US, or gladiatorial entertainment in ancient Rome. A law is usually "unjust" only because it's fallen out of style with the people, for better or for worse.
And since when do you need guns to break a law? Were all laws obeyed before the invention of guns?
I really don't understand that mentality at all.
It is the responsibility of the military occupiers with the weapons to make sure they don't shoot the wrong people. We are SUPPOSED to be bringing freedom to these people, your solution tends toward total fascism like Nazi Germany or Socialist Russia where you must show travel papers at every turn or be shot on sight.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
He was also a trained intelligence agent with more time in service than most of the people in the US unit COMBINED.
So, why do you ASSUME that he made any mistakes?Again, you're ASSUMING specifics about the situation that haven't been established.
The guy driving the car was a MAJOR, the guy in the backseat was a MAJOR GENERAL.
So, of course you ASSUME that some kids in the National Guard know more about operations than two high ranking Italian agents.So, you have a system has you admit has had problems in the past (yet you don't say how it's been corrected) and you have your assumptions about how experts were less experienced than a bunch of National Guard kids
Personally, I'm waiting for the Italian report on the condition of the car and the bullet holes in Calipari.
He flew into the cable, not the gondola.
The lift was not marked on military aviation maps, Italian or US.
I can find no evidence that says they were brought back to the states "very fast". They supposedly did not know of the cable car falling until hours later back at Aviano.
An Italian judge ruled that the US military had sole jurisdiction over the proceedings.
The low altitude warning alarm was set to 800 feet. The alarm did not sound.
The pilot was found not guilty of involuntary homicide and manslaughter. Yes, he was flying too low through the mountains. Probably hotdogging a little. But it was an accident.
The only acceptable verdict to the Italians would have been guilty. Guilty of what? Manslaughter? At most it could have been the flying equivalent of 'reckless driving'.
Being a soldier who just got back from Iraq I'm actually pretty pissed at this because of the fucking dangers behind it.
.. The so called insurgents sure as hell know what their doing every bit as much as those same insurgents know what to fuck the imperial forces are doing and how. After all they watch and scutinize your every move and gauge every reaction. The only people being informed with this information is the mushrooms back home.
... As a soldier you have been trained to bitch and blame shift on this matter, the offical military stance since Vietnam and a war the U.S. would have won if not for more or less open reporting that occurred there and a mistake that same military has vowed to never let happen again. Better to keep the home folks ignorant and fat on sugar plum reportage else risk flagging support for empire building incursions such as this one.
... The American People and Allies where lied to in making the case for this war and have been lied to continually via tightly controlled and cherry picked reportage ever since. In another word, U.S. Political and Military controlled 'Propaganda' is shaping public opinion not objective reporting of facts and the corrosponding development of popular opinion. Albeit outright lies, distortions of truth or propoganda, the question of how democracy and freedom can survive in such an environment becomes an honest one. Indeed.
Well thats your ARMY for ya fuck nut! If your pissed then be pissed at the dipshits who can't put out a clean PDF not those who may unredact and read it.
Point 2
Point 3
Point 4
And do you consider the result "ok"?
With all due respect, USA had nothing to do in Iraq, it wasn't threatened by it and it knew that it poses no danger. Also, at the current stage there are open admissions that intelligence data was twisted for political needs not to represent actual situations.
How often do you shoot your neighbors just because they might be holding a gun and planning to shoot you? And claim that this was just a self-defense out of necessity? Try it out! It works! It's the american way, after all!
The fact that USA tries to enforce its laws across the world is NOT acceptable, regardless of what your comment shows you think. This just isn't how the law is supposed to work.
There are cultures where murder is a very encouraged and normal (if not mandatory) response to a case if someone rapes your daughter (in example).
There are cultures where there are no needs for cops, because the justice is enforced by everyone and any criminal risk loosing not only his position in society, but home and friends too.
You just might have heard that there are cultures where the LAW is defined and exact and don't depends on 15 tomes of decisions of similar cases or your capabilities to appear as a victim of society to the jurors.
I'm not saying that Sadam Hussein wasn't a criminal. Yes, he was, he was involved in war crimes, genocide, just plain power stretching around and enforced really harsh means to silence the opposition, but this wasn't the USA's business. For heaven's sake, Iraq even isn't a border country for the USA, what would add some credibility to the "World Cop" role it postulates.
In short: US law is law that is (and should be) enforced only in USA. One step across the border - and you have a different set of laws. And that's how it should stay - each culture deciding itself on the laws it needs and the enforcement methods it should use.
There is a really, really big difference between McJunkie Girl (violently raped at each of last three parties she attended and happy for that) and the wife of some Taliban Man (violently beaten up each evening, and happy for that). And laws are made to reflect that.
And anyway, while the military might have managed to convince the world that it was all made up, they would have figured out how it was done quickly enough anyway.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Everyone asserts that the US constitution doesn't apply overseas, but I don't see anything that would imply that in the constitution itself - it's all along the lines of, "Congress shall not do X."
Not "Congress shall not do X, except to brown-skinned furriners with funny outfits and long beards," or "Congress shall not do X in any place where reporters might see it done," or "Congress shall not do X unless they first convince a majority of voting Americans that it's OK."
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
While the US government is likely to blame this entire mess on the Italians, I can't help but wonder, is it their fault? Up until now perhaps, the Iraqi insurgents and other anti-American forces probably didn't have the capability or wherewithall to employ this innovative "cut and paste technology" to discover classified bits of information.
Are the Americans so jaded and naive that they think this hidden information would have only been discovered had it not been for some Italians publicizing it?
If you ask me, probably the only way to get important groups to better-secure their information, is through exposes of this nature which embarass them into changing their methods, otherwise it may very well have been just the Iraqi insurgency and a few others that, for several more years would have employed this super-secret cut-and-paste technology.
The 1-76 TOC had two means of communicating with 4th Brigade, its higher headquarters: Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)2 and FM. The 1-76 FA Battle Captain was using only VOIP to communicate with 1-69 IN, but experienced problems with VOIP, therefore losing its only communication link with 1-69 IN, other than going through 4th Brigade. (Annex 97C). As a result, the Battle Captain was unable to pass updated information about the blocking mission either directly to 1-69 IN, or to 4th Brigade. He did not attempt to contact 4th Brigade via FM communications. (Annex 63C).
and
(U) Mr. Carpani told Sergeant First Class Feliciano who Ms. Sgrena was and that he was trying to get to the airport. He told Sergeant First Class Feliciano that he heard shots from somewhere, and that he panicked and started speeding, trying to get to the airport as quickly as possible. Mr. Carpani further told Sergeant First Class Feliciano that he continued to speed down the ramp, and that he was in a hurry to get to the airport. (Annexes 91C, 136C).
So it all came down to two issues.
(1) Failure to communicate. The car wasn't where it should be, wasn't informed of what was waiting ahead of them, gave its position but that information was not forwarded to the roadblock, so they were not expecting them.
(2) The driver then risked the lives of everyone in the vehicle by reacting with very bad judgement when he arrived at the roadblock. (accelerating the vehicle after he was spotlighted, laserpointered, and heard the warning shots)
Bad decisions by the driver of the vehicle, amplified by failure to communicate.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
read the censored stuff, it is highly dangerous - for the guys who want this war, not for the guys who execute it. PAT
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
The photos clearly show right passenger-side windows blown out (one of those rounds was the one killing the agent)
What do you suppose happened to those rounds after hitting the passenger window and not hitting a person or car interior? Is it reasonable to assume they passed right on through the rear window?
Or, On your planet do the laws of physics dictate that a 7.62x51mm round travelling at approximately 2800ft/sec will immediately stop upon hitting a few millimeters of glass?
What? FDR went to war against Japan, a country that Attacked America. He also went to war against Germany, a country that declared war on America first and allied with Japan.
Bush, on the other hand, went to war against Afghanistan, a country that harbored Al Qaeda. He also went to war against Iraq, a country that did not declare war on America and had nothing at all to do with Al Qaeda.
I fail to see how you can connect the two. We're not safer, go ask anyone living in the Middle East if they love America more now because of the Iraq war. Check the blogs if you're lazy.
The pilots were talking about "self defence" or some other horseshit. Yeah, flying at 10000 feet in the middle of the night you are likely to get hit by a stray bullet. And after they dropped the bomb, they only had to wait about 10 seconds for the air command to tell them they just bombed the Canadians.
I guess it's war then, eh? Shit happens. When bin Laden declared war on the US in 1997 (or there about), then they crashed into World Trace Center, well, maybe by your judgement, well, it was war. Shit happens. People die. Move on. Right?
100,000+ Iraqies dead over the last 2 years? Oh well, shit happens... None of them were your kids so it doesn't really matter..
c) The physical evidence that not only refutes Sgrena, but displays the exceptional skill of the American military
from the report:
he fired another burst, walking the rounds from the ground on the passenger's side of the vehicle and towards the car's engine block in an attempt to disable it. The rounds hit the right and front sides of the vehicle, deflated the left front tire, and blew out the side windows
He shot at the engine block, and managed to put a round through the windshield and blow out the side windows. Yessir, that's exceptional skill all right.
d) satellites recorded the entire incident... and further exonerate the US military of any wrongdoing.
The US government claims it has this data. It's a good thing we all know the government would never ever lie about anything, isn't it? Where can we review this data ourselves, so we don't have to take the word of a party who has a lot riding on the outcome?
f) The fact that no one in the media or public forum seems concerned that Italy is engaged in the deceptive and dangerous practice of rewarding terrorists
First, how is that relevant to the question of whether they should have machinegunned that car? Unless your position is, the Italians deserved to die, and the soldiers did it on purpose? Second, I'd agree that rewarding terrorists (or criminals, as the case may be, we all know that the occupying forces have failed to provide an adequate level of security for the population, and kidnapping for profit is rampant) is a bad idea. Third, terrorists? They're all folking terrorists. The guys who kidnap people for profit, the guys on all sides who kidnap people for political reasons (that would include those where the kidnapees end up being tortured in Egypt or transported to Gitmo, no less than the cases where they get their head cut off on-camera), and the guys who machinegun civilian cars.
I don't think big conspiracy here. I just think the Army always tries to protect its own, all the way up the chain of command. You may remember that after the murder of 504 civilians at My Lai, none of the murderers ever did jail time. They're saying none of the responsible officers had any clue what went on at Abu Ghraib (or elsewhere, apparently). That's just not credible. (If it were, the criminals who committed those acts should do long stints appropriate to sex crimes. Sex crimes? That's what they'd call it if I forced your sister to masturbate in public at gunpoint, right? Should it be different if the victim is an Iraqi male?)
While I'm sure that you have your own sources of information and that you're an intelligent human being with your own opinion of the matter I think you're incorrect and in this case misinformed, thought I'm happy to keep an open mind.
My bias (you've got yours which I'd be curious to hear about and I've got mine) is that of an MP in Baghdad during the time in question. I was not in this unit's chain of command but I am familiar with operations in the city.
The entire story to date - just this morning, in fact - is that the Italians were in contact with the US command up to 25 minutes after the release of Sgrena.
That is their story, ours is that this communication did not occur.
I repeat, they were on a SECURE road - meaning, obviously, that the road was lined with US checkpoints more so than the well-known "airport" road which is the most dangerous road in Iraq. The Italians pointed out that they had already passed several US checkpoints (not Iraqi checkpoints) and were a few minutes from the airport when the incident occurred.
I understand that you're repeating this assertion, that doesn't make it so. Route Force (now Vernon I believe) is no more secure than route Irish (the airport road), I wish that it were but it's not. They were in fact a few minutes from the airport, but again that doesn't make them any more secure. I drove route Irish at least 25 times, it's not a secure road, it's not somewhere where you would want particularly to be, route Force (Vernon) was probably worse than that. In any case this was not a checkpoint but a roadblock, traffic is not intended to pass a roadblock.
Secondly, if I had Italian agents wandering around the area trying to free a prominent hostage, I'd be keeping tabs on them as well as possible - which would mean constant contact via cell phone and ELINT monitoring and possibly US escorts (the latter I suspect the Italians refused for obvious reasons). If not, the US military and the CIA are less intelligent even than I think.
If I were an Italian agent I would make sure I coordinated with the forces in the area, not depended on a capability which simply does not exist. Hollywood notwithstanding there is not some whiz-bang display at Battalion level that displays cell phone users etc. This coordination did not occur our story is that the Italians didn't do it, presumably they assert otherwise. Hope is no substitute for a plan, if they didn't plan (and rehearse) coordination in advance than they were dangerously unprepared.
While it is not clear that the US actually intended to assassinate Sgrena and the Italian agents, it IS clear from the literally hundreds or thousands of US killings at checkpoints - often when the vehicle involved is at least a hundred meters from the checkpoint and no identification of the occupants is even possible - that the US troops are trigger-happy morons with no regard for the local population in an urban combat situation.
While I'm curious as to the source of your information I can tell you that the troops I served with were not "trigger-happy morons". The unfortunate fact of life is that you either comply with instructions at checkpoints or you are liable to be shot. In a better world this wouldn't be the case, but Baghdad 2005 is not a better world.
Nobody wants to harm civilians, it's not in our interest and it's not the right thing to do. I was there and I didn't develop a sociopathic desire to kill random civilians, but if I feel that you're a threat to me or my soldiers I'm going to do my best to kill you. That's not pretty, it's not nice, it's uncomfortable to hear (and say), but it's reality. If it's a choice between them and you, it's not really a choice.
While it is fashionable to babble about how they are scared of the resistance car bombs, it would behoove them a) not to join the military if they can't handle it; b) design their operations to minimize the threat without having to wholesale murder the populati