Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: The Toll of 'Friendly Fire' on Journalists in Iraq

Hazardous assignment
By H.D.S. Greenway | March 11, 2005
ON ONE thing the Italian government and the White House
agree. The killing of intelligence officer Nicola
Calipari and the wounding of journalist Giuliana Sgrena
by American soliders was a "horrific accident." But
beyond that there is little agreement as to what
happened.
The Americans say the car the Italians were traveling in
was going 60 miles an hour. The Italians say it was
going 25. The Americans say they gave hand signals,
flashed lights, and fired warning shots to get the car
to slow down approaching their checkpoint. The Italians
say there was no obvious checkpoint, no warning shots,
and the bright light that illuminated their car came on
virtually as the bullets began to pour. The Italians say
the Americans were told the car was on its way to the
airport. The Americans say they were not.
Giuliana Sgrena's suggestion that the Americans might
have targeted her car isn't credible. But given that she
had just been released from a harrowing month in
captivity only to be shot by Americans, a little
emotional hyperbole is understandable. After all, CNN's
Eason Jordan made similar charges that the military
targeted journalists -- charges that brought about his
resignation.
For journalists there is simply no more dangerous
assignment than Iraq. According to the Committee to
Protect Journalists, 37 journalists have been killed in
Iraq in the two years since we went to war. Only three
lost their lives during the invasion itself. The rest
were killed after President Bush announced mission
accomplished. This compares with 66 journalists killed
in Vietnam, according to Freedom Forum, but that was for
a 20-year period, 1955 to 1975, not just two years.
In addition, 27 journalists have been abducted beginning
in 2004. Twenty-four of them, like Giuliana Sgrena, were
eventually released, but two were murdered. One, French
journalist Florence Aubenas, is still being held.
The majority of journalists killed in Iraq, 19, have
been Iraqis, and they are the unsung heroes of the
Baghdad press corps. As the assignment has gotten more
and more dangerous, Western reporters, who cannot blend
into the scenery, have become almost prisoners in their
compounds and hotels, unable to go out and cover stories
as much as they used to do. As a result, Iraqi reporters
have taken up the slack, going into dangerous situations
and reporting back to their home bureaus.
Add to that the deaths of media workers -- 18 Iraqis and
one Lebanese -- who have lost their lives as drivers,
interpreters, and fixers without whom Western
journalists could not operate. Aubenas's interpreter,
Hussein Hanoon, was kidnapped with her.
In addition, a lively Iraqi press has arisen in post-
Saddam Iraq, and Iraqis have lost their lives reporting
for their own media.
But for the purposes of this story the most interesting
statistic is that although 20 journalists have been
killed by "insurgent action" in Iraq, which includes
crossfires, suicide bombings, and targeted killings,
according to CPJ, nearly half as many, nine, were killed
by American soldiers in what the military, in that most
ironic of euphemisms, calls "friendly fire." And it was
friendly fire that has so injured relations between
Italy and the United States, killed a Bulgarian
sergeant, and mowed down uncounted numbers of Iraqi
civilians at checkpoints and barricades.
"Next to the scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, no
other aspect of the American military presence in Iraq
has caused such widespread dismay and anger among
Iraqis," wrote veteran Baghdad correspondent John Burns
in The New York Times.
One has to sympathize that young American soldiers have
to make split-second decisions as to whether an
approaching car is full of children, an Italian
journalist, or a suicide bomber. And the reality is that
for much of the country there is no security even two
years after Washington's decision to invade Iraq.
The senior US general in Iraq, George Casey, has ordered
a review of all the checkpoint incidents in the past six
months. He is likely to turn up dozens upon dozens of
"horrific accidents" that need not, and should not, have
happened. Whether that will ever be admitted is another
matter.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
(c) Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
-- 
www.iaciners.org
(Gwen DeMarco: Whoever wrote this episode should DIE.)

 Hazardous assignment
ma parla come mangiz!
-- 
Indovina il film:
Una famiglia si trasferisce dalla città in una tranquilla casa di campagna.
Quando però iniziano a ristrutturarla, si accorgono che la loro nuova
proprietà nasconde un terribile passato...
Soluzione: 
http://cinemaz.altervista.org/?id=3014