Results for "sgrena"

Exoneration.

Howard Kurtz says something seems amiss.
This is a courageous young woman.
I must say, though, that I found her first interview yesterday rather odd. Carroll seemed bent on giving her captors a positive review, going on about how well they treated her, how they gave her food and let her go to the bathroom. And they [...]

My latest column follows up on the lies of Jimmy Massey and his media enablers.
Doug Struck, the Washington Post reporter who covered Massey’s bogus testimony at Army deserter Jeremy Hinzman’s Canadian asylum hearing last year, has not responded to my e-mail inquiring about any follow-up.
USA Today reporter Rick Hampson, who wrote this March 2005 feature, [...]

I’ve written before on the perils of paying off throat-slitting terrorists. John Rosenthal at Transatlantic Intelligencer tipped me off to his very interesting analysis examining the correlation between ransom and civilian casualties in Iraq. Check it out.
Seems clear to me: When you subsidize something, you get more of it. Blood money for terrorists begets more [...]

This blog turned one last week! (BTW: Congrats to Karol at Alarming News, which turned the Big 3 today.)
First, some blogiversary expressions of gratitude:
Special thanks to the following people for their warm welcomes, words of advice/encouragement, and early links during mm.com’s incipient days: John, Paul, and Scott at Power Line, John Hawkins at Right Wing [...]

Drudge has the siren spinning over Newsweek’s refusal to accept reporter Michael Isikoff’s resignation. The magazine is making all macho-like in standing up to supposed White House bullying:
“Mike was told he would not be sacrificed, we are standing behind him 100%,” a top magazine source told the DRUDGE REPORT. “We do not, I repeat, do [...]

Stars and Stripes covers the Sgrena report debacle and the worldwide blogger feeding frenzy over the weekend, highlighting unresolved questions about which hapless U.S. military officials may have been responsible for posting the PDF version of the file without completely removing the classified portions in hidden text viewable via copy-and-paste:
U.S. commanders in Iraq posted a [...]

Several bloggers following the Sgrena investigation are linking today to a leaked version of the U.S. military’s report on the incident, which appears to inadvertently reveal critical classified information. The link points to an Italian newspaper that gives instruction on how to copy and paste “hidden” text in the PDF version of the report. The [...]

There have been several new developments in the probe of the Iraqi checkpoint shooting involving Italian anti-war Communist writer Giuliana Sgrena. On Saturday night, the U.S. military released its official investigative report of the incident (details of which were leaked earlier in the week). Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the ground commander in Iraq, has [...]

Well, well, well. Check this out from The Sunday Times-World:
March 13, 2005
Italy to stop paying ransoms
John Follain, Rome
THE Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has promised President George W Bush that he will not pay more ransoms to free hostages in Iraq.
The Italian government has denied newspaper reports that $6m (£3.1m) was paid for the release [...]

Captain Ed breaks down the latest twists and turns in the Giuliana Sgrena saga.
She’s looking more and more like, as the OC Chronicle put it, Italy’s Tawana Brawley.

Apropos of my column this week on Italy’s ransom payments to terrorists, here’s a new related story out of the Philippines:
Once more, the Arroyo government is claimed to be negotiating the release of hostaged Filipino accountant Roberto Tarongoy by his captors, with a counter offer of $6 million, or $4 million short of the earlier [...]

There they go again:
In an article published Sunday in her communist newspaper, Il Manifesto, Sgrena wrote, “Our car was driving slowly,” and “the Americans fired without motive.
Here is Sgrena’s Il Manifesto article, as translated by CNN. As I noted before (here and here), her Il Manifesto article doesn’t say what CNN says she said. In [...]

Sgrena’s boyfriend Pier Scolari said Sgrena told him “she collected handfuls of bullets on the seats” of the car.
This doesn’t pass the smell test. Any bullet shot into the car would have either passed through the vehicle, been fragmented beyond recognition, or become imbedded into part of the car.
If she’s talking about spent casings, those [...]

Am scheduled to appear on Fox News’ The Big Story sometime between 5-6pm eastern today, and tomorrow on Fox & Friends around 6:50am eastern, to discuss the Sgrena case and handsome ransoms for terrorists.
Update: The Political Teen has video of today’s appearance on The Big Story, and a transcript has been posted here.

My new column focuses on an angle of the Sgrena case that I think has gotten short shrift in the MSM: Italy’s willingness to negotiate with throat-slitting terrorists.
As you may recall, I lambasted the Philippines for going wobbly and paying off the barbarians last year to free truck driver Angelo de la Cruz (see here, [...]

This is what Giuilana Sgrena told Corriere della Sera, as best as I can figure:
I have not said that the Americans wanted to kill me, I have only said that the mechanics of this fact is the mechanics of an ambush….
I doubt I could understand what her point is even if I could read Italian.

ABC News:
A senior U.S. military official tells ABC News he believes the investigation into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops in Iraq will ultimately prove the officer’s car was traveling in excess of 100 mph….
Sgrena’s driver has said the car was going only 25-30 miles per hour.

Photos of Giuliana Sgrena’s car are available at http://www.repubblica.it. Click on “IMMAGINI l’auto colpita dai soldati Usa” beneath top story to view more pics.

I can’t see a single bullet hole. [Ed. note: besides the one in the circle that Rusty Shackleford points out, that is.]
LGF posted about this earlier today.
Update: Reader Steve Gregg writes:
Ms. [...]

Still wondering about Giuliana Sgrena’s ransom?
Lucia Annunziata, former president of Italian state television RAI, “said yesterday government sources estimate Italy has paid kidnappers nearly $15 million for hostages in the past year,” according to the New York Post today. Annunziata admits:
“The frequency of our kidnappings has transformed that which was an extraordinary, emergency option into [...]

Yesterday, CNN published an article stating:
In an article published Sunday in her communist newspaper, Il Manifesto, Giuliana Sgrena wrote, “Our car was driving slowly,” and “the Americans fired without motive.”
About 15 minutes after I pointed out that Sgrena’s Il Manifesto article said no such thing, CNN quietly removed the fabricated quote and replaced it with [...]

CNN reports:
In an article published Sunday in her communist newspaper, Il Manifesto, Giuliana Sgrena wrote, “Our car was driving slowly,” and “the Americans fired without motive.”
[Update 2:17pm...Quote has been removed, but you can still see it here.]
Ok, now click on the link to CNN’s translation of Sgrena’s article. Notice anything strange? According to CNN’s [...]

The biggest story of the weekend, which continues to spill all over today’s headlines, is the Giuliana Sgrena debacle in Iraq. LGF , OTB, and the Jawa Report, among many others, have done great jobs covering the twists and turns.
So, how much was the ransom allegedly paid by the Italian government to Sgrena’s still-unidentified terrorist [...]

Dan Gillmor, a well-known technology writer who used to be a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, weighs in on Apple Computer’s attempt to force three bloggers to reveal confidential sources:
A judge in California has decided that the sites don’t qualify as “journalism” (AP) under state law and/or the First Amendment. By his bizarre [...]

Regarding the shooting of freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena:
“Don’t believe a word of the U.S. version,” said Oliviero Diliberto, secretary of the Italian Communist Party. “There’s an attempt to mask what actually happened. The Americans deliberately fired on the Italians.”
The Guardian quotes several other Italians making Easonesque assertions:
Enzo Bianco, the opposition head of the parliamentary [...]

Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena has been released, but according to Reuters, “U.S. forces mistakenly opened fire on the convoy taking her to safety, wounding her and killing an Italian secret service agent.” The Jawa Report is all over the story.
Update: Reader Greg points out that the Reuters story left out an important part of [...]

Looks like that Italian hostage in Iraq, an anti-war journalist who writes for the Communist publication Il Manifesto, will be released soon. Al Jazeera (natch) reports:
“Since it has become absolutely clear that the Italian prisoner is not involved in espionage for the infidels in Iraq, and in response to the call from the [Association of [...]