Italians Keep Mum on Hostage Release

It appears that the allegations of wrongdoing against the U.S. in the recent shooting involving an Italian journalist held hostage were complete nonsense as we thought. Apparently the Italians, knowing the U.S. distaste for negotiating with terrorists, decided not to inform the U.S. about what was going on, and in so doing, created a dangerous situation that resulted in the death of one of their agents (from the Washington Times).

Italian agents likely withheld information from U.S. counterparts about a cash-for-freedom deal with gunmen holding an Italian hostage for fear that Americans might block the trade, Italian news reports said yesterday.

The decision by operatives of Italy's SISMI military intelligence service to keep the CIA in the dark about the deal for the release of reporter Giuliana Sgrena, might have "short-circuited" communications with U.S. forces controlling the road from Baghdad to the city's airport, the newspaper La Stampa said.

That would help explain why American troops opened fire on a car whisking the released hostage to a waiting airplane, wounding Miss Sgrena and killing the Italian intelligence operative who had just negotiated her release.

The hostage, Giuliana Sgrena, has decided that the best defense is a good offense, so even though her country failed to inform our forces about what was going on and placed her in a very dangerous situation, it's still our fault that she was injured:

Miss Sgrena, a reporter for the Communist daily Il Manifesto, charged yesterday that U.S. forces might have deliberately targeted her because Washington opposes Italy's policy of dealing with kidnappers.

"The United States doesn't approve of this [ransom] policy and so they try to stop it in any way possible," the veteran war reporter, 57, told Sky Italia TV.

Miss Sgrena, whose newspaper ardently opposes Italy's deployment of 3,000 troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition, offered no direct evidence to support the charge and toned down the suggestion in a later interview with Reuters.

"If this happened because of a lack of information or deliberately, I don't know, but even if it was due to a lack of information, it is unacceptable," she said from her hospital room.

Moron.