"I think it’s absurd to make any such suggestion that our men and women in uniform deliberately targeted innocent civilians. That’s just absurd," said spokesman Scott McClellan.
Reuters:
Italy Honors Agent; U.S. Denies Deliberate Killing
"Sir,
The incident is under investigation. As additional details are
available, they will be released.
SSG Dees"
Answer from the U.S. Army to a detailed request for information by the newsweekly ‘Die Zeit’ (Sgrena does write for ‘Die Zeit’)
[Sgrena] later told Italian state TV RAI that "when they let me go, it was a difficult moment for me because they told me, ‘The Americans don’t want you to return alive to Italy.’" She didn’t elaborate.
WaPo: White House: Italian Journalist’s Comments ‘Absurd’
Newsweek, via Dan Froomkin, on a Bush "townhall" meeting:
Carlos Huertas was billed as a concerned grandfather and hard-working engineer when he sat onstage next to President Bush to talk about retirement accounts in downtown Tampa, Fla., last month.
…
The Florida granddad is an activist for FreedomWorks, a conservative group founded by former vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp and Dick Armey, the former House GOP leader.
The pressure groups website says:
FreedomWorks recruits, educates, trains and mobilizes hundreds of thousands of volunteer activists to fight for less government, lower taxes, and more freedom.
Recruit, educate, train, mobilize to fight – interesting language …
Come in, come in …
Warren Buffet thinks trade policy should be used to correct the U.S. current account deficit. I do think this is the wrong way.
The evidence grows that our trade policies will put unremitting pressure on the dollar for many years to come
…
More Anti-Military Slurs from the MSM
Of course that was to be expected. These lubral media are the real terrorists!
Through the Looking Glass – Humpty Dumpty on the difference of "carve out" vs. "add-on". Why should there be any?
The Chinese think about the merging of the Chinese and U.S. culture.
Both honestly care for the Rectification of Errors.
Plus:
For Whom the Blog Tolls The Iranian revolution eating its Children.
U.S. Fires on Car Carrying Freed Hostage
BAGHDAD, Iraq – American forces fired on a car carrying a freed Italian hostage as it approached a checkpoint in Baghdad on Friday, killing an Italian intelligence officer and wounding three others, including the just-released journalist, Italian officials said.
…
The U.S. military said "at approximately 8:55 p.m. tonight, coalition forces assigned to the multinational force Iraq fired on a vehicle that was approaching a coalition checkpoint in Baghdad at a high rate of speed."
If this was a screw up, imagine how many of these are happening every day without any reporting. If this was a plan …
UPDATE: Fresh from the ticker
AP: U.S. Secret Service Agent Shot Dead by Italian Forces in Iraq
WASHINGTON – A freed American hostage was injured and an American secret service agent killed Friday after an Italian armored vehicle fired on a car in which they were riding in Iraq (news – web sites), two news agencies reported.
(stolen from a kos comment)
What would the headlines say? And the Krauthammer’s and O`Reilly’s OpEd’s and comments?
The blog Newshounds received a letter from the syndication company of Faux’ Bill O’Reilly demanding to:
immediately cease and desist from your unauthorized use of the link to Bill O’Reilly’s column on his website.
This column is as ridicules as one could expect.
Many Americans believe that little kids should have a childhood and not be subjected to any kind of sexuality. I don’t want to be offensive here, but who in their right mind wants to explain Norma and Barbara’s lifestyle to their 4-year-old?
People who know about children and sex education do answer questions that children have. It helps to keep them healthy and to not grow up to some harassing bigot like Bill O´Reilly is.
Now please, here is the link to that column again. Please send me a letter. Please.
Keep talking…
A few bar snacks:
Oil majors in scramble to tap Qatar’s extensive gas reserves
Ukraine ex-minister linked to murder of journalist found dead
More than 1,500 GI’s have died in Iraq by now. Additionally some 200 contractors and some 100 soldiers from several other countries died.
The accounts vary:
U.S. Department of Defense has some numbers. Global Security has other numbers, as do ICasualties.org and the Associated Press. All the above are usually based on reports from the U.S. military and I have my doubts that these numbers are correct.
Iraq Body Count only counts confirmed civilian dead, some 18,000 by now, directly attributed to the war and not including possible insurgents. They say their numbers are certainly an underestimation.
The scientifically correct Lancet study (free sub.) four month ago did give, as the most probable number of war related Iraqi casualties, 100,000. This was not the maximum number as some reports said, but the most probable. Today that number is likely higher.
Uncounted are still the future victims of this war. Especially those from radioactive dust distributed through the use of depleted uranium ammunition and other long term illnesses.
Higher today are also oil prices $54.60/bl and going for $80.00/bl, if not higher. This does not only mean recession, but it will also kill people, because the price for wheat, corn, rice and soybeans will rise with the oil price and the poor on this planet will not be able to afford food.
The fruitless actions of the military and the mercenaries will continue, as will the prices for commodities, until the U.S. public wakes up and kicks ass. In Vietnam it took more than 50,000 killed GI’s to bring the war to an end. What will it take in Iraq?
Völkischer Beobachter as People’s Choice
Two weeks ago, Paul Krugman advised for Wag-the-Dog Protection
The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn’t relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.
To change oh so slightly the topic from the doom and gloom of previous posts, here’s a bit of good news, unless you are DeAnander:
The Flying Taxi:
Both are white: Pots and Kettles
On cotton: George W. Minderbinder
Well, after my previous post about China’s laudable attempts to develop renewable energy (see below), here’s a darker picture, still taken from the subscription part of the Financial Times: Shifting sands threaten China’s economic march
China as a whole appears to be fighting a losing battle against the shifting desert sands. According to official estimates, China’s deserts are growing by 3,500 sq km a year and now cover 18 per cent of the country. The sand threatens a further one-third of the mainland and 400m people, says Wang Xinjiang, an official from the anti-desertification office of the state forestry administration. The Asian Development Bank says accelerating desertification in China “increasingly threatens the economic welfare of the nation”. It has resulted in the loss of vast swathes of arable land, sinking ground water levels and heavily silted rivers. Mr Wang says China’s expanding deserts have direct economic costs of Rmb54bn (€4.9bn) a year. The problem is largely man-made, with logging and over-exploitation of land aggravating a natural lack of water and rainfall, leading to rapid soil erosion.
Cont. reading: China – Desert Threatens 400 Million People & Other Scary News
Correction: – Sorry I got the original story wrong. –
I accused the U.S. State Department Human Rights report of lying, when it said about a man tortured in Syria that he had "returned home to Syria to visit his family".
I assumed the man mentioned was Maher Arar, who had been abducted by U.S. officials and was send to Syria to be tortured. With this assumption in mind, it looked like a lie.
But the State Departments report may refer to Abdullah Almalki who is a Canadian-Syrian and who did return to Syria to visit relatives. Both men, Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, are reported to have been severly tortured in Syrian prisions. There are some 47,700 Google links related to "Maher Arar" and some 1,220 related to "Abdullah Almalki". I did assume the wider reported story was the base of the report.
So the State Department may not have lied as I alleged. But the State Department has the hypocrisy and chutzpah to include the case of a Abdullah Almalki in their human rights report on Syria, while ommitting the very well documented case of Maher Arar.
In the omitted case the US administration is directly responsible for Human Rights violations. It was obviously convinient, to not include it.
This in mind, you still may want to read my original uncorrected post below the fold.