unredacted

the nyt takes its turn to spin the sgrena report (see here for my takedown of other reporting)

* "The car carrying the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena that was struck with a deadly hail of gunfire as it sped toward Baghdad International Airport on March 4 ignored warnings"
note how the article implies that the car was on the famously dangerous road - without actually saying it.

* "(The report) said the troops stationed at the checkpoint were on their first full day on shift there and "lacked experience in issuing operational orders and in battle tracking security forces" at checkpoints."
the nyt implies that the guys on a checkpoint for negroponte are rookies. sure. to be fair, the nyt adds the 'there' disclaimer - but the intent to deceive is obvious. it was a fucking mobile checkpoint.

* "Italian officials have disputed preliminary accounts of the shooting..." but the only discrepancy they identify is the speed the car was travelling - they dont mention, for example, that sgrena was shot in the back.

via kevin drum, we see that the heavily redacted report has actually been released. we also learn that the pdf can easily be unredacted :-) you can see both versions here. it'd be interesting to know whether it was intentional

from the report: "A forensic examination of the car was performed after its removal from the scene. This analysis disclosed 11 entrance bullet holes. They are consistent with 7.62 mm bullets. Three bullets perforated the front section of the car at the bumper, right head light, and right fender. Two bullets perforated the windshield. Six bullets perforated the right side, right door, right front and rear passenger windows. "
sgrena must have been facing backwards...

this comment points to some of the redactions. this comment mentions some of the problems that the italians have with it.

there was also this nonsense from thursday: "A US satellite reportedly recorded a checkpoint shooting in Iraq last month, enabling investigators to reconstruct how fast a car carrying a top Italian intelligence official and a freed hostage was traveling when US troops opened fire... Pentagon officials said the satellite recording enabled investigators to reconstruct the event without having to rely on the eyewitness accounts."
thats awesome. a satellite that can reverse engineer the speed of any car, 2 months earlier, at any point in time. why do they lie? interestingly, it was this report that proved that the ams couldnt possibly have given any warning - perhaps they couldnt simultaneuously prove the car was speeding whilst maintaining the fiction that they had given sufficient warning - and thats why it isnt in the final report.

the nonsense about the satellite 'filming' sgrena's car was delivered via a cbs broadcast on thursday - cbs is bending over backwards to earn shitehouse goodie points. shame on them.

even more curiously, reuters on saturday says: "CBS news has reported that a U.S. satellite had filmed the shooting and that it had been established the car carrying Calipari was traveling at more than 60 miles per hour as it approached the U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad." - the LAT ran the same (basically) reuters story - but they excluded that sentence. the wingnuts are suggesting that its proof that the LAT hates america - altho in retrospect, it is more likely that the egadmin realised their mistake - ie they had to chose between either 'the car was going fast' or 'we gave them enough warning' - and tried to subsequently pull all references to the satellite 'video' story. hows that for a fascinating little look into the inner workings of the media!