The daughter of a World War II veteran, Sgrena was one of the founders of the peace movement in the 1980s.
....
With this in mind, the reporter refused to become embedded with the US military during the war - choosing, instead, to remain in Iraq on her own during the major hostilities of the spring of 2003.
She then returned to the country periodically, focusing on the suffering of ordinary Iraqis brought about by a war she was vehemently opposed to.
In a telling story, she interviewed an Iraqi woman who said she was held at Abu Ghraib prison for 80 days by US forces.
Through Sgrena, Mithal al-Hassan said: "There were times when they didn't give me any water or food at all. Then, from the neighbouring cells I could hear the screams... There was no way you could sleep... I couldn't stand things any more. In the end I asked if I could write a note for my children, because I wanted to commit suicide."
Coincidentally (or not), Sgrena and her boyfriend, Pier Scolari (who was just great on the old Newhart show, as well as Bosom Buddies), seems to think that the details of the shooting are just a tad different from what has been reported by the US military thus far [emphases mine]:
"Our vehicle was running at normal speed, which could not be misunderstood," she said, rejecting US fears of a possible suicide attack.
"It wasn't a checkpoint, but a patrol which immediately opened fire after they trained their light on us."
A companion, who travelled with her from Baghdad, levelled serious accusations at the US troops involved in the incident, saying the shooting had been deliberate.
"The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," said Pier Scolari on leaving Italy's Celio hospital, where Ms Sgrena was treated for her wounds.
"They were 700 metres from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints."
And now the Italians are molto arrabbiato, not that you can blame them.
Meanwhile, about 100 protesters have gathered outside the US embassy in Rome, calling for a US withdrawal from Iraq and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's resignation.
They carried a banner reading "Bush has changed: now he even kills Italians".
Now, while the conspiracy theory is always tempting, one must first search for motive. Sgrena had already published her Abu Ghraib scoops long ago. That horse was long out of the barn. Revenge? Possible, but at the risk of taking out Italian intelligence agents (which is exactly what happened)? Seems like a big risk for something that could be done at any time. Possibly Sgrena had gleaned valuable info from her captors, but that would still necessitate her being debriefed first. We're just riffing a bit here, while more information rolls in, but for now let's just say we're cautiously skeptical all the way around.
Still, all aspects of this story definitely bear scrutiny. Think about how many death threats Joseph Darby got after exposing the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib to the American public. Think about how many death threats Kevin Sites got after releasing his video of the Marine putting a bullet into an unarmed Iraqi's head. Just because they haven't been gotten yet doesn't mean they won't be; Darby's family had to move to another state because right-thinking Americans don't want to know how the sausage gets made.
But what do you want to bet that if this aspect even makes it into the corrupt, cowardly US media, it instantly gets pooh-poohed by the officious mandarins of the Leslie Blitzer lodge, and dies a quick Guckert-like death?
Meanwhile, Eason Jordan is still unemployed for his rash suggestion about the caustic relations between troops and un-embedded media. "Embedded" automatically means "co-opted", and why that obvious fact doesn't get more play is just another in a long line of cognitive weirdness.
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