"Route Force (Vernon) runs North/South and does not intersect with either the airport or the Green Zone."
Problem with this is twofold: first, the US report states specifically that Route Vernon leads to an intersection with Route Irish essentially at the on-ramp to the Airport. Second, how to explain why Sgrena said they entered the Green Zone to get to the road - this is very clear in Klein's interview. If Sgrena is entirely wrong about this, then I might accept it, but there seems to be no reason to believe this. It also does not explain why the fact that they were on Route Vernon is almost completely ignored in the US report except to explain how they got to Route Irish - which is heavily emphasized in the report as being dangerous (as we know it is).
Per the report, the Force/Irish intersection is the third one to the East of the airport. I can tell you from personal experience that route Force does not intersect with the airport.
I should clarify as well, Route Irish runs North / South until a little outside the Green Zone where it curves south (not that it's germane to this conversation but for the sake of completeness I figured I'd mention it), you actually turn off onto another road to get into the Green Zone.
So I'd say that Ms. Klein or Ms. Sgrena are mistaken, it wouldn't be the only part in the interview that appears incorrect (for example the "It was a four-inch bullet that entered her body and broke apart"). Completely understandable, however you slice it there's no doubt that Ms. Sgrena had just been through quite an ordeal (rather a series of ordeals certainly including her captivity).
Why they were on route Force (Vernon) is not addressed in the report, it's not spectacularly relevant to the question of the shooting itself, though I can tell you that route Force did have a lot of attacks occuring on it during the time I was there.
Roadblocking does serve the tactical purpose of reducing access to potentially bad people from a given area. It's tactically useful under circumstances, protecting the convoy with Negroponte would be one of those circumstances (though we all agree that the roadblock should only have been in place for about 15 minutes).
Thanks for the link, I'll do some more googling for the pictures. The CTV report does not indicate any bullet holes entering through the rear of the vehicle. The hole in the rear passenger seat is presumably from the bullet that went through Ms Sgrena's shoulder.
The Pentagon appears capable of admitting it's mistakes (possibly not real happy about it, but certainly capable). This report while not finding criminal wrong doing certainly has a laundry list of shortcomings and recommendations.
On the other hand the Bush administration does appear completely incapable of admitting any mistakes, wrongdoing, errors, or culpability in any forum or manner, but that's a whole other story.
The long and the short of it is that neither of us were at the scene when it happened so it's all speculation really. By the same token I'm glad they didn't just decide to pin this on a Specialist from the NY National Guard for the sake of political expediency (particularly being NY ARNG myself) and political correctness.
I've read the Democracy Now! interview and Ms Klien is simply mistaken.
Route Irish runs East/West between the Airport and other routes into the Green Zone.
Route Force (Vernon) runs North/South and does not intersect with either the airport or the Green Zone.
Unless you get lost you do not need to traverse 6 checkpoints to get into the Green Zone, 1 is normally sufficient (maybe 2 or 3 depending on where inside you want to go).
Geographically this makes it hard to understand Ms Sgrena / Ms Klein's contention that the car visited the Green Zone before heading to the airport. I suppose they could have gotten lost (very lost in this case), but if this is the case than it only adds to the chain of unfortunate co-incidences that led to this incident.
Your contentend that the Army's story of the rounds entering the front and right of the vehicle have been refuted. Has anyone other than Ms Sgrena refuted this (understandably she would not be the world's best witness under the circumstances)? Do you have any citations for places I could look to further educate myself on this question?
As to the wisdom of establishing this roadblock in the first place: How else would you suggest restricting access to Route Irish for the protection of a particular convoy? The roadblock should have been in position for 15 minutes, instead 80 minutes later the shooting occured. One of the causes of this incident appears to be the failure of the 1-76 to properly run the Route Irish security operations that evening.
I would argue that the Italians share responsibility for the shooting.
As to the Army sanitizing the scene: You're in a war zone, CSI is not going to show up, rope off the area with crime scene tape and start dusting for fingerprints. The HMMWVs in question left the scene to take Ms Sgrena to the hospital.
I would be surprised if the 15-6 report were the absolute gospel truth, but based on being in the area at the time it certainly has the ring of authenticity to me. Certainly there is disagreement on the speed the car was travelling (hardly surprising), but whatever speed they were travelling they didn't stop in time. Perhaps that's because the driver was talking on his cell-phone, perhaps he was travelling too fast, perhaps he just didn't see the HMMWV in the middle of the road. Who knows for sure? I would hope that both the Italians and US take this case to heart and update their procedures to ensure that it doesn't re-occur, but Murphy is still out there.
Your views on your place in society as well as the place of those who decide to be in the military are interesting, and you're certainly entitled to them. I wouldn't agree with your assertion that everyone in the military is guilty of being irrational or incompetent until proven otherwise but obviously we'll agree to disagree here. Regardless I'm looking forward to getting back to my regularly scheduled life as a computer geek.
I'll preface this by saying that my intention here is to be informative rather than argumentative.
With regards to your first three paragraphs, the road in question runs north/south approximately 6km to the east of the Green Zone (Section IV B (about page 15 as word renders it on my machine)).
This is not a secure route, there are no secure routes in Baghdad. Depending on which roads they took to get to the Force/Irish intersection it is most likely that they never passed through an American checkpoint (generally speaking we don't run TCPs on routes).
One of the vehicles was in the road (the one that fired) and the other was off to the side providing overwatch and ensuring that nobody came up the on-ramp from the route Irish side. (Section IV D 2).
Again, the Italians were not in communication with US forces (again understanding that the Italian report may have details that are currently unavailable). There was a captain assigned as a liason but his story is that he never got any concrete information as to the specifics of any rescue mission.
For what it's worth, the communications problems occured between the blocking position's Battalion and the 1-76 FA's Battalion (the infamous VOIP phone). The two teams at the blocking position had all their communication equipment working and they were actively using it for command and control.
The 1-69 never got the word that Negroponte's convoy had passed, and in fact had passed 35 minutes prior to the shooting (IV D 4).
Again, this was not a checkpoint. The HMMWVs were in a blocking position. The Army's account is that there were 11 bullet strikes on the front and right side of the car. I am aware that Ms Sgrena has claimed otherwise, but her accounts have not been consistent (nor would I expect them to be, whatever else happened this reporter was under unbelivable stress and had just been shot). Also for what it's worth while the HMMWVs in question were probably uparmored (the report is unclear on this question) they were not tanks for Bradley fighting vehicles. In any case there is no evidence that the vehicle was fired upon from the rear (or at least no evidence at this time, if you've got some non-anecdotal evidence to the contrary I for one would consider it quite helpful).
You are correct though, there was no way for the soldiers in question to be able to identify the occupants of the vehicle, they determined that the vehicle was a threat because of it's actions (not stopping). The rules of war are clear, nothing in them inhibits a soldiers right to self defense.
The shooting appears (to me) to have three main causes: 1) Whatever speed the vehicle was travelling, it didn't stop when signalled to. 2) The Italians did not coordinate their movements with the forces on the ground. 3) The 1-76 FA did not effectively track and communicate with the 1-69 INF.
It would appear to me to be a horrible accident.
As to the rest of your post:
Your comment that "Finally, I'm well aware that the military makes statements similar to yours regarding what is SOP about protecting civilians, etc. is a bit of a catch-22. Does this mean that because I was actve duty at the time I'm part of some larger conspiracy and thus suspect in all my comments?
With regards to international law, we are not "obligated to prevent these things from happening". The troops in question felt threatened and took action to eliminate the threat. As to the larger question, unfortunately now that the powers that be have decided that we needed to invade the country (and though it's off-topic I am not the only soldier who questions that need) we are in fact obligated to stick around and fix what we broke. It is our obligation as an occupying power (Convention 4 of the Geneva Conventions I believe).
As to whether we were just in invading in the first place, like I said I am of two minds on the issue personally.
As to your experiences in Vietnam and the army in general during tha
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
That might be true if it weren't happening on a "secure" road. But it did.
Here's the problem, there are no "secure" routes in Baghdad. Obviously two plus years into this wonderous undertaking that shouldn't be the case but it is, and it's not news to anyone in the area including (presumably) the Italians.
Therefore one has to ask who did the troops think was in the car? Iraqis? Resistance? On a secure road which leads directly between the largest US base in the country and the airport?
The troops at the checkpoint presumably didn't know who was in the car, only that they hadn't stopped (as had the other cars that night) and were approaching the checkpoint in a threatening manner.
The vehicle had permission from the US to be on that road. The vehicle was undoubtedly being monitored by electronic intelligence and the US military should have known where it was at all times. The Italians claim the US did not know who was in the car, but I find that doubtful as well, especially as cell phones were in use in the vehicle.
I can safely say that your claims of US omniscience, while flattering, are dramatically overstated. It is still a warzone, it's not like this car was the only thing happening in Baghdad that evening. Even if all that information were available, in real-time, it would be impossible to keep up with. If you've ever been around a Battalion or Company level TOC you'll know that when operations are going on it can be a very busy place.
And the final damning piece of evidence is the US refusal to allow the Italian investigators to inspect the vehicle. That smells of coverup all around.
What they don't want you to know was that the car was on a secure road, where there should not have been a checkpoint at all, since Iraqi resistance forces have no way to access this road. It's a highly secure road. The Italians had no reason to expect a "checkpoint" on this road; the fact that they there was one is highly suspicious, to say the least. Wake up and smell the coffee, people! There are no secure roads in Baghdad, I was there and wished that there were, but there aren't. If you know the whereabouts of this "secure road" I'd sure like to know about it (and the source of this knowledge if you don't mind).
"This is a secured road connecting the Green Zone with the huge Camp Victory military base attached to Baghdad's airport." I was in Baghdad at the time of this incident and travelled along route Irish often. There is no "secured road" anywhere between the airport and the Green Zone. Route Irish is the closest thing we had to a secured road and obviously the insurgents spent quite a bit of time keeping it from being secure. Route Force (Vernon) was one of the more dangerous routes in the area at the time.
I hope everyone would agree that people worldwide should "start thinking and using their brains for a change".
I was in the city at the time and had been for nearly a year. This sounds to me like one of the inevitable horrible tragedies that occur during wartime. Someone said "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon) W hat possible motive would the US have for firing at Ms Sgrena's vehicle?
As to the charge that "Anybody who has covered the Iraq war has known - or has seen - checkpoint hell, where nervous American soldiers fire on anything that moves." I would respectfully disagree wholeheartedly. The soldiers in my company used a tremendous amount of restraint in their dealings with the local populace. I'm not saying that living in a city under occupation is by any means a pleasant experience, but our soldiers do not fire indiscriminately at every car driving down the road.
Slashdot Mirror
"Route Force (Vernon) runs North/South and does not intersect with either the airport or the Green Zone."
Problem with this is twofold: first, the US report states specifically that Route Vernon leads to an intersection with Route Irish essentially at the on-ramp to the Airport. Second, how to explain why Sgrena said they entered the Green Zone to get to the road - this is very clear in Klein's interview. If Sgrena is entirely wrong about this, then I might accept it, but there seems to be no reason to believe this. It also does not explain why the fact that they were on Route Vernon is almost completely ignored in the US report except to explain how they got to Route Irish - which is heavily emphasized in the report as being dangerous (as we know it is).
Per the report, the Force/Irish intersection is the third one to the East of the airport. I can tell you from personal experience that route Force does not intersect with the airport.
I should clarify as well, Route Irish runs North / South until a little outside the Green Zone where it curves south (not that it's germane to this conversation but for the sake of completeness I figured I'd mention it), you actually turn off onto another road to get into the Green Zone.
So I'd say that Ms. Klein or Ms. Sgrena are mistaken, it wouldn't be the only part in the interview that appears incorrect (for example the "It was a four-inch bullet that entered her body and broke apart"). Completely understandable, however you slice it there's no doubt that Ms. Sgrena had just been through quite an ordeal (rather a series of ordeals certainly including her captivity).
Why they were on route Force (Vernon) is not addressed in the report, it's not spectacularly relevant to the question of the shooting itself, though I can tell you that route Force did have a lot of attacks occuring on it during the time I was there.
Roadblocking does serve the tactical purpose of reducing access to potentially bad people from a given area. It's tactically useful under circumstances, protecting the convoy with Negroponte would be one of those circumstances (though we all agree that the roadblock should only have been in place for about 15 minutes).
Thanks for the link, I'll do some more googling for the pictures. The CTV report does not indicate any bullet holes entering through the rear of the vehicle. The hole in the rear passenger seat is presumably from the bullet that went through Ms Sgrena's shoulder.
The Pentagon appears capable of admitting it's mistakes (possibly not real happy about it, but certainly capable). This report while not finding criminal wrong doing certainly has a laundry list of shortcomings and recommendations.
On the other hand the Bush administration does appear completely incapable of admitting any mistakes, wrongdoing, errors, or culpability in any forum or manner, but that's a whole other story.
The long and the short of it is that neither of us were at the scene when it happened so it's all speculation really. By the same token I'm glad they didn't just decide to pin this on a Specialist from the NY National Guard for the sake of political expediency (particularly being NY ARNG myself) and political correctness.
I've read the Democracy Now! interview and Ms Klien is simply mistaken.
Route Irish runs East/West between the Airport and other routes into the Green Zone.
Route Force (Vernon) runs North/South and does not intersect with either the airport or the Green Zone.
Unless you get lost you do not need to traverse 6 checkpoints to get into the Green Zone, 1 is normally sufficient (maybe 2 or 3 depending on where inside you want to go).
Geographically this makes it hard to understand Ms Sgrena / Ms Klein's contention that the car visited the Green Zone before heading to the airport. I suppose they could have gotten lost (very lost in this case), but if this is the case than it only adds to the chain of unfortunate co-incidences that led to this incident.
Your contentend that the Army's story of the rounds entering the front and right of the vehicle have been refuted. Has anyone other than Ms Sgrena refuted this (understandably she would not be the world's best witness under the circumstances)? Do you have any citations for places I could look to further educate myself on this question?
As to the wisdom of establishing this roadblock in the first place: How else would you suggest restricting access to Route Irish for the protection of a particular convoy? The roadblock should have been in position for 15 minutes, instead 80 minutes later the shooting occured. One of the causes of this incident appears to be the failure of the 1-76 to properly run the Route Irish security operations that evening.
I would argue that the Italians share responsibility for the shooting.
As to the Army sanitizing the scene:
You're in a war zone, CSI is not going to show up, rope off the area with crime scene tape and start dusting for fingerprints. The HMMWVs in question left the scene to take Ms Sgrena to the hospital.
I would be surprised if the 15-6 report were the absolute gospel truth, but based on being in the area at the time it certainly has the ring of authenticity to me. Certainly there is disagreement on the speed the car was travelling (hardly surprising), but whatever speed they were travelling they didn't stop in time. Perhaps that's because the driver was talking on his cell-phone, perhaps he was travelling too fast, perhaps he just didn't see the HMMWV in the middle of the road. Who knows for sure? I would hope that both the Italians and US take this case to heart and update their procedures to ensure that it doesn't re-occur, but Murphy is still out there.
Your views on your place in society as well as the place of those who decide to be in the military are interesting, and you're certainly entitled to them. I wouldn't agree with your assertion that everyone in the military is guilty of being irrational or incompetent until proven otherwise but obviously we'll agree to disagree here. Regardless I'm looking forward to getting back to my regularly scheduled life as a computer geek.
I'll preface this by saying that my intention here is to be informative rather than argumentative.
With regards to your first three paragraphs, the road in question runs north/south approximately 6km to the east of the Green Zone (Section IV B (about page 15 as word renders it on my machine)).
This is not a secure route, there are no secure routes in Baghdad. Depending on which roads they took to get to the Force/Irish intersection it is most likely that they never passed through an American checkpoint (generally speaking we don't run TCPs on routes).
One of the vehicles was in the road (the one that fired) and the other was off to the side providing overwatch and ensuring that nobody came up the on-ramp from the route Irish side. (Section IV D 2).
Again, the Italians were not in communication with US forces (again understanding that the Italian report may have details that are currently unavailable). There was a captain assigned as a liason but his story is that he never got any concrete information as to the specifics of any rescue mission.
For what it's worth, the communications problems occured between the blocking position's Battalion and the 1-76 FA's Battalion (the infamous VOIP phone). The two teams at the blocking position had all their communication equipment working and they were actively using it for command and control.
The 1-69 never got the word that Negroponte's convoy had passed, and in fact had passed 35 minutes prior to the shooting (IV D 4).
Again, this was not a checkpoint. The HMMWVs were in a blocking position. The Army's account is that there were 11 bullet strikes on the front and right side of the car. I am aware that Ms Sgrena has claimed otherwise, but her accounts have not been consistent (nor would I expect them to be, whatever else happened this reporter was under unbelivable stress and had just been shot). Also for what it's worth while the HMMWVs in question were probably uparmored (the report is unclear on this question) they were not tanks for Bradley fighting vehicles. In any case there is no evidence that the vehicle was fired upon from the rear (or at least no evidence at this time, if you've got some non-anecdotal evidence to the contrary I for one would consider it quite helpful).
You are correct though, there was no way for the soldiers in question to be able to identify the occupants of the vehicle, they determined that the vehicle was a threat because of it's actions (not stopping). The rules of war are clear, nothing in them inhibits a soldiers right to self defense.
The shooting appears (to me) to have three main causes:
1) Whatever speed the vehicle was travelling, it didn't stop when signalled to.
2) The Italians did not coordinate their movements with the forces on the ground.
3) The 1-76 FA did not effectively track and communicate with the 1-69 INF.
It would appear to me to be a horrible accident.
As to the rest of your post:
Your comment that "Finally, I'm well aware that the military makes statements similar to yours regarding what is SOP about protecting civilians, etc. is a bit of a catch-22. Does this mean that because I was actve duty at the time I'm part of some larger conspiracy and thus suspect in all my comments?
With regards to international law, we are not "obligated to prevent these things from happening". The troops in question felt threatened and took action to eliminate the threat. As to the larger question, unfortunately now that the powers that be have decided that we needed to invade the country (and though it's off-topic I am not the only soldier who questions that need) we are in fact obligated to stick around and fix what we broke. It is our obligation as an occupying power (Convention 4 of the Geneva Conventions I believe).
As to whether we were just in invading in the first place, like I said I am of two minds on the issue personally.
As to your experiences in Vietnam and the army in general during tha
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
That might be true if it weren't happening on a "secure" road. But it did.
Here's the problem, there are no "secure" routes in Baghdad. Obviously two plus years into this wonderous undertaking that shouldn't be the case but it is, and it's not news to anyone in the area including (presumably) the Italians.
Therefore one has to ask who did the troops think was in the car? Iraqis? Resistance? On a secure road which leads directly between the largest US base in the country and the airport?
The troops at the checkpoint presumably didn't know who was in the car, only that they hadn't stopped (as had the other cars that night) and were approaching the checkpoint in a threatening manner.
The vehicle had permission from the US to be on that road. The vehicle was undoubtedly being monitored by electronic intelligence and the US military should have known where it was at all times. The Italians claim the US did not know who was in the car, but I find that doubtful as well, especially as cell phones were in use in the vehicle.
I can safely say that your claims of US omniscience, while flattering, are dramatically overstated. It is still a warzone, it's not like this car was the only thing happening in Baghdad that evening. Even if all that information were available, in real-time, it would be impossible to keep up with. If you've ever been around a Battalion or Company level TOC you'll know that when operations are going on it can be a very busy place.
And the final damning piece of evidence is the US refusal to allow the Italian investigators to inspect the vehicle. That smells of coverup all around.
Source?
What they don't want you to know was that the car was on a secure road, where there should not have been a checkpoint at all, since Iraqi resistance forces have no way to access this road. It's a highly secure road. The Italians had no reason to expect a "checkpoint" on this road; the fact that they there was one is highly suspicious, to say the least. Wake up and smell the coffee, people! There are no secure roads in Baghdad, I was there and wished that there were, but there aren't. If you know the whereabouts of this "secure road" I'd sure like to know about it (and the source of this knowledge if you don't mind).
W hat possible motive would the US have for firing at Ms Sgrena's vehicle?
"This is a secured road connecting the Green Zone with the huge Camp Victory military base attached to Baghdad's airport."
I was in Baghdad at the time of this incident and travelled along route Irish often. There is no "secured road" anywhere between the airport and the Green Zone. Route Irish is the closest thing we had to a secured road and obviously the insurgents spent quite a bit of time keeping it from being secure. Route Force (Vernon) was one of the more dangerous routes in the area at the time.
I hope everyone would agree that people worldwide should "start thinking and using their brains for a change".
I was in the city at the time and had been for nearly a year. This sounds to me like one of the inevitable horrible tragedies that occur during wartime. Someone said "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon)
As to the charge that "Anybody who has covered the Iraq war has known - or has seen - checkpoint hell, where nervous American soldiers fire on anything that moves." I would respectfully disagree wholeheartedly. The soldiers in my company used a tremendous amount of restraint in their dealings with the local populace. I'm not saying that living in a city under occupation is by any means a pleasant experience, but our soldiers do not fire indiscriminately at every car driving down the road.