How Does the US Military Plea: Never Guilty!

Early last month I posted the case of a kidnapped Italian left wing journalist, Guiliana Sgrena, who was freed by insurgents after successful negotiations.

While being driven to Baghdad arport to be flown home to Italy, the car carrying her was shot up by US troops.

Nicola Calipari, an Italian agent who had negotiated her release, and was with her in the car was killed in the shooting. He shielded her with his own body when the Americans started spraying bullets at their vehicle.

Sgrema and her party accused the US soldiers of deliberately targeting her and shooting to kill, as they didn’t want her alive for a variety of reasons.

Diplomatic relations between Italy and the USA were strained, with the US promising a full inquiry. As expected, the US has just cleared those troops responsible for the indiscriminate and murderous gunfire.

Italy has refused to endorse the report but what the hell can she do? When you deal with the crimes of American troops, whether it’s indiscriminate firing, bombing, missile attacks, tank or artillery shelling, napalming, chemical spraying etc that killed innocents, you will never get a conviction.

Remember the My Lai massacre, the gungho killing of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, the Falluja cold blooded murder of an unarmed wounded Iraqi in a mosque, the deliberate shelling by a US tank of particular journalists at a Baghdad hotel known to house international journalists, the bombing murder of Afghans and Iraqis at weddings, and the peacetime episodes of the Marine Air Corp Prowler aircraft cutting the cable of the ski car, killing 20 people (the Marines were swiftly flown back to the safety of the USA, much to the fury of the Italian Prime Minister and people), the sinking of a Japanese fishing training ship by a US submarine off Hawaii, and during the 1st Gulf War, the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airline by the USN Vincennes, killing more than 290 civilians (the US courts refused claims of compensation by the victims' Iranian families, while awarding generous payouts to victims of a KAL airline shot down by USSR fighters - subsequently after the Cold War ended, tapes released by the USSR proved that Korean Airlines was correct in its claims of non-culpability, but tough luck, the compensation of several hundreds of millions had already been paid out as ordered by the US courts).