Sunday, May 08, 2005
Calipari/Sgrena - more details
The first half is about how the Pentagon reacted to its muck-up with the PDF file. The second half looks at the two reports themselves. That is the American and the Italian report on the circumstances around the killing of agent Calipari.
Jax
Talk about rebel technology: the Pentagon this week was not overwhelmed by a dirty bomb or a jet converted into a missile, but by a simple cut and paste job. Like anyone else, the Pentagon uses Adobe Acrobat. At first, the 42 pages of the report which would supposedly shed some light on the March 4 killing of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari and the wounding of kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Baghdad showed up on the Centcom website as a PDF file heavily censored with large sections blacked out - including the significant omission, among others, of the names of all the soldiers involved in the shooting, as well as entire pages.
But because the Pentagon failed to save the file properly, all it took was for someone to cut and paste the document into a word-processing application to give Italy and the rest of the world access to the full, uncensored version.
The Pentagon was enveloped by huge clouds of embarrassment. Its first reaction was a "no comment". Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, a press officer, repeatedly told Italian journalists that if they wanted to find out how substantial, uncensored sections of the Calipari report could have been available "by mistake" on the Centcom website last Saturday night, they had to contact "the multinational force in Iraq". It took the Pentagon practically the whole of Monday to rebuke Italian journalists, until it offered the final confirmation that it was an "error of procedure" which didn't alter the essence of the report anyway. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the consequences were "more tactical than strategic".
Truths collide
The uncensored Pentagon report at least allows the international public to know that there were no less than 15,527 attacks on the occupation forces from July 2004 to March 2005. In Baghdad alone, from November to March 12, there were 2,404 attacks. These numbers confirm that when US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his minions spin that the situation in Iraq is under control they are essentially lying. In the three months since the Iraqi elections there may have been fewer American casualties, but there were countless more assassination attempts against the so-called Iraqi security forces, all of them based on precise intelligence. Every day, there are at least 20 bomb attacks in Baghdad alone, and at least 60 throughout Iraq.
As for the Calipari/Sgrena affair, the Italian report - written by diplomat Cesare Ragaglini and General Pierluigi Campregher - contests point by point the Pentagon report. And stealing a page from Pentagon procedure, this is also a sanitized version: embattled Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi went overboard to salvage what he considers his privileged relationship with Washington, to the point, according to Italian daily Il Messagero, that he "read, reread, corrected and tweaked the report before handing it back to Italian military intelligence".
Regardless, the Italian report is devastating. Among the most important issues: 1) American soldiers did not signal or warn the Toyota Corolla carrying Calipari and Sgrena - a fact confirmed even by a US official, who sheepishly ventured that the Italian driver did not understand the road signs "because they are written in English and Arabic". Sgrena, as well as the driver, a major with the Italian carabinieri, have always been adamant: there were no warning shots. 2) The soldiers at the checkpoint fired away due to "stress and inexperience". Specialist Mario Lozano was the man who shot and killed Calipari. 3) The Toyota was traveling at no more than 50 km/h (the Pentagon says it was close to 100 km/h). The road was wet, the major was driving with only one hand because he was talking on a mobile phone, and to top it all he was approaching a 90-degree turn. 4) The crime scene was not isolated and secured. Evidence simply "disappeared". 5) The Americans knew about Calipari, and that he was on a mission in Baghdad, even if they didn't know the details. US command was informed by the Italians of a delicate mission hours before the shooting, and they knew that Sgrena had been released 25 minutes before Calipari was killed.
But in the end, nothing happened. Nobody is to blame - because by definition the Pentagon can do no wrong. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is happy, Berlusconi is happy. The same would not apply to Italian public opinion. (Link)
Jax
Talk about rebel technology: the Pentagon this week was not overwhelmed by a dirty bomb or a jet converted into a missile, but by a simple cut and paste job. Like anyone else, the Pentagon uses Adobe Acrobat. At first, the 42 pages of the report which would supposedly shed some light on the March 4 killing of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari and the wounding of kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Baghdad showed up on the Centcom website as a PDF file heavily censored with large sections blacked out - including the significant omission, among others, of the names of all the soldiers involved in the shooting, as well as entire pages.
But because the Pentagon failed to save the file properly, all it took was for someone to cut and paste the document into a word-processing application to give Italy and the rest of the world access to the full, uncensored version.
The Pentagon was enveloped by huge clouds of embarrassment. Its first reaction was a "no comment". Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, a press officer, repeatedly told Italian journalists that if they wanted to find out how substantial, uncensored sections of the Calipari report could have been available "by mistake" on the Centcom website last Saturday night, they had to contact "the multinational force in Iraq". It took the Pentagon practically the whole of Monday to rebuke Italian journalists, until it offered the final confirmation that it was an "error of procedure" which didn't alter the essence of the report anyway. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the consequences were "more tactical than strategic".
Truths collide
The uncensored Pentagon report at least allows the international public to know that there were no less than 15,527 attacks on the occupation forces from July 2004 to March 2005. In Baghdad alone, from November to March 12, there were 2,404 attacks. These numbers confirm that when US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his minions spin that the situation in Iraq is under control they are essentially lying. In the three months since the Iraqi elections there may have been fewer American casualties, but there were countless more assassination attempts against the so-called Iraqi security forces, all of them based on precise intelligence. Every day, there are at least 20 bomb attacks in Baghdad alone, and at least 60 throughout Iraq.
As for the Calipari/Sgrena affair, the Italian report - written by diplomat Cesare Ragaglini and General Pierluigi Campregher - contests point by point the Pentagon report. And stealing a page from Pentagon procedure, this is also a sanitized version: embattled Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi went overboard to salvage what he considers his privileged relationship with Washington, to the point, according to Italian daily Il Messagero, that he "read, reread, corrected and tweaked the report before handing it back to Italian military intelligence".
Regardless, the Italian report is devastating. Among the most important issues: 1) American soldiers did not signal or warn the Toyota Corolla carrying Calipari and Sgrena - a fact confirmed even by a US official, who sheepishly ventured that the Italian driver did not understand the road signs "because they are written in English and Arabic". Sgrena, as well as the driver, a major with the Italian carabinieri, have always been adamant: there were no warning shots. 2) The soldiers at the checkpoint fired away due to "stress and inexperience". Specialist Mario Lozano was the man who shot and killed Calipari. 3) The Toyota was traveling at no more than 50 km/h (the Pentagon says it was close to 100 km/h). The road was wet, the major was driving with only one hand because he was talking on a mobile phone, and to top it all he was approaching a 90-degree turn. 4) The crime scene was not isolated and secured. Evidence simply "disappeared". 5) The Americans knew about Calipari, and that he was on a mission in Baghdad, even if they didn't know the details. US command was informed by the Italians of a delicate mission hours before the shooting, and they knew that Sgrena had been released 25 minutes before Calipari was killed.
But in the end, nothing happened. Nobody is to blame - because by definition the Pentagon can do no wrong. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is happy, Berlusconi is happy. The same would not apply to Italian public opinion. (Link)
