[BRIEF NOTE] The Calipari Affair
Mar. 7th, 2005 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldClaudia Muir has a post up at A Fistful of Euros on the shooting of Italian agent Nicola Calipari by American soldiers in Iraq as Calipari returned with former hostage Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist. The news has already had a major impact in Italy, as Reuters notes:
Abiola Lapite's suggestion that the shooting wasn't entirely unexpected, given conflicting assumptions about the role of checkpoints and miscommunication generally, makes the most intuitive sense to me. There have been reports of US soldiers systematically harassing non-Western journalists working for unpopular stations like Al-Jazeerah. But summary assassinations of foreign journalists? And I am skeptical as to why Sgrena's kidnappers' suggestion that the Americans were planning to kill her should be taken seriously, given that they were her kidnappers. An actual assassination attempt that manages to kill an agent working for one of the United States' major European allies in Iraq would be still more stupid than Napoleon's relationship with the Duc d'Enghien?
Nicola Calipari has been hailed as a hero at home after he died while shielding a newly-freed Italian hostage from U.S. gunfire outside Baghdad airport.
Among the mourners at his funeral were Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who sent Calipari on the fatal mission to Baghdad and is trying to reconcile his fervent pro-U.S. policies with demands for the truth from Washington over the shooting. Hundreds of Italians lined the streets of Rome as Calipari's body was driven to the basilica of St Mary of the Angels and Martyrs for the funeral, shown live on television.
Abiola Lapite's suggestion that the shooting wasn't entirely unexpected, given conflicting assumptions about the role of checkpoints and miscommunication generally, makes the most intuitive sense to me. There have been reports of US soldiers systematically harassing non-Western journalists working for unpopular stations like Al-Jazeerah. But summary assassinations of foreign journalists? And I am skeptical as to why Sgrena's kidnappers' suggestion that the Americans were planning to kill her should be taken seriously, given that they were her kidnappers. An actual assassination attempt that manages to kill an agent working for one of the United States' major European allies in Iraq would be still more stupid than Napoleon's relationship with the Duc d'Enghien?
