A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

Hold the champagne. I suppose it's a credit to our intelligence services that they got the information that she worked for a communist paper down to the roadside checkpoint level.

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March 4, 2005
U.S. Forces Fired on Car Carrying Freed Italian Hostage in Iraq
By REUTERS

Filed at 4:03 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, March 4 (Reuters) - Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was freed by her captors on Friday but U.S. forces in Iraq mistakenly opened fire on the convoy taking her to safety, wounding her and killing an Italian secret service agent.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he had immediately summoned the U.S. ambassador, declaring someone had to take responsibility for American soldiers opening fire.

Berlusconi, one of U.S. President George W. Bush's staunchest supporters in Iraq, told a news conference the agent had been shot dead by U.S. forces at a checkpoint and that Sgrena had been wounded in the shoulder.

In Washington, the Pentagon said "multinational forces" had opened fire on a speeding vehicle in Baghdad, causing the death and wounding Sgrena.

"This news which should have been a moment of celebration, has been ruined by this firefight," said Gabriele Polo, editor of Sgrena's Il Manifesto paper, a Rome-based Communist daily.