Checkpoints, Part II

    So many people have asked me about the checkpoint incident involving the Italian reporter I felt obligated to dismiss the rhetoric streaming out of the European Press. 

    I'll start by dismantling the most obvious lie - that US soldiers deliberately targeted an innocent civilian.  I imagine our Italian friend imagines a conversation something like this:

Command:  Checkpoint, we have an escaped hostage ready to be flown to freedom and we need her killed.

Checkpoint:  Is it that meddling reporter who is always thwarting our plan to manipulate the proletariat by revealing the hidden agenda of our corporate masters?

Command:  Yes.  Yes that is the one.  Make sure you fire hundreds of rounds into her vehicle to ensure the job is done.

Checkpoint: Of course.  We will use the tank!

     The whole premise is stunningly out of touch with reality.  I can't think of a single commander I have EVER worked with that would give orders to kill a reporter, however vile their agenda.  Assuming a US commander had tried to give an illegal order the conversation would have sounded like this:

Command:  Checkpoint, we have an escaped hostage ready to be flown to freedom and we need her killed.

Checkpoint:  What? Say again, over.

Command:  I said we have an escaped hostage ready to be flown to freedom and we need her killed.

Checkpoint: Are you smoking crack?

     Only a person who had wasted their entire natural born life propping up an failed ideology could manage to see our soldiers as cold hearted automatons willing to kill those we disagree with.

     The second blatant fallacy is the level of force used to stop the vehicle.  Ms Sgrania was quoted in the BBC saying that an armored vehicle had opened fire on her vehicle.  You don't have to be a ballistics expert to see through this blatant lie.  If an M-1 Abrams fired its main tube at an oncoming vehicle all you would be left with is molten slag.  Hell, the smallest weapon on a tank would slice through the vehicle length wise without pause. 

     As for the comment on hundreds of rounds being fired - well that just isn't how we do business.  This isn't amateur hour, our soldiers don't fire unless they are in emminent danger and when they do fire they hit what they are aiming at.  Don't believe me?  Check out the pictures yourself at http://www.repubblica.it  It doesn't take an imagery analyst to see the only hole in the vehicle is a single hole through the windshield. 

     I'm sure if you had a better picture you could see the round fired into the engine block as a final warning.  And for the record, a shot into the radiator isn't meant to disable the vehicle.  It is meant as a final warning before we use deadly force.  There is no way you could miss or ignore the shriek of a US round ripping into an engine.  That sound needs no translation.

Comments

[John]

There was a thought provoking and I thought a balanced view of this tragedy published in the New York Times last Sunday (13 March) by Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine captain, entitled "Manning the Barricades." I think you'd find it worth reading.

[Athena]

Thanks for taking the time to give us your personal account.

[Athena]

Thanks for your comments. Some soldiers from Iraq spoke last night on my campus and I asked them about the precautions they use so they don't target civilians, and one went on the defensive at first (thinking I was alluding to and condemning the Sgrena situation), but explained it mostly the same way you did. Even the US press is making this out like an incident where US soldiers behaved wrongly, especially with headlines like, "US troops wound Italian hostage." The headline should really be "Italian hostage entourage attempts to run checkpoint and is fired upon."

[Bill]

Yep, once again the "People Who Have Important Things To Say" only display their deep and utter ignorance of anything military. I guess you folks on the ground will just have to carry-on without benefit of Sgrena's valuable input. /sarcasm. Keep up the good work and may the days pass quickly.

[MyAdidas]

This whole thing reminds me of a troll on my brother's weblog named Alvaro Froto.... He claimed that the Iraqi's shot down an F-16 that was doing a low-altitude, low-speed mission. WHATEVER! I also saw today on the back of a German magazine (I am stationed in Germany) an ad for a t-shirt. It was designed like a concert tee, but read, "US WORLD DOMINATION TOUR" and the places and dates were labeled "Bombing a country near you." It was pretty bad.

[Charlie]

And I bet the BBC editors and reporters will laugh off this highly critical account of how much the Italian journalist hated the Americans from the start : http://www.zachtei.nl/2005/03/08.../08/ 000670.html