haricalipari

i got an email from adam asking if he can be emailed the blog posts. lemme know if anyone else wants it via email like the old days (cept there are now pix, and there are more emails than before cos they are smaller).

adam has been a bad boy and apparently never visits here.

he also asked for my thoughts on the latest findings on the sgrena debacle: "The United States and Italy failed to come to the same conclusions in the investigation"

i dont really have any new thoughts - it seems quite apparent that the car was intentionally hit - perhaps the only outstanding question is whether the target was sgrena or calipari - or both. i dont really have a view on that.

the media reporting continues to be appalling - and point to the fact that the americans are guilty - otherwise they wouldnt need to prevaricate.

for example - lets take this sentence/para: "The road to Baghdad International Airport is considered one of the most dangerous routes in Iraq and is a frequent site of insurgent attacks." this sentence is categorically true. the only problem is that the road of which they speak isnt the road that sgrena was travelling on.

while boldly stating that 'witness accounts vary', the article doesnt mention the fact that there are two separate accounts, from sgrena and the other italian secretservice fella (the article disingenuously calls him a 'bodyguard'), which are apparently identical - and the two italians didnt speak after the event.

the article also doesnt mention that sgrena was shot in the back - which would appear to provide the cnn journo some chance to move beyond 'accounts vary' to 'accounts vary, and theres some pretty serious evidence to suggest that sgrena's is the accurate version, and the americans are lying.'

the articla also offers us this: "a temporary checkpoint (was) set up that night because John Negroponte was to pass by." - which is a funny use of tense - because negroponte's car had passed by at least an hour earlier... (as far as i can remember)

the AP takes it a step further: "The soldiers had been on high alert at the time because the U.S. ambassador, John Negroponte, had been due to pass by the checkpoint."

the other fun part of the story is that the am.military's own math apparently doesnt add up. i havent checked it, but the details are here.

the italians are gonna do their own investigation, and are apparently gonna get the car - itll be interesting to see whether that that evidence has been tampered with.

you can see hardtalk's interview with sgrena here, and amygoodmans interview here, and amy's interview with naomi klein about the incident here.