1 How fast were the bullets flying?

2 rusty; malkin has just linked to an aussie-abc interview w/sgrene'a boyfriend who said that she told him she gathered handfuls of bullets from the seats of the car. malkin correctly added that this doesn't pass the smell test: bullet wouldn't have come to rest on the care seats, and spent casings are left near the shooters, not the target. check her out and link to it if you think it's up to your high standards. BTW: tonight i spoke on the phone to a friend in Rome - a former Italian lefty who says that the Italians are not as anti-American as the italian media, an that most people know sgrena has an anti-American ax to grind, and that attacking her would've served no useful purpose for the USA. so he - and most Italians aren't buying the commie lie.

3 I guess the speed of the car all depends on whether the dude driving it was named Andretti..... By the way, Da...Rusty, your wife has been complaining about migranes again. You'll need to stay in the alley with Hank for, oh, the next two hours or so or my holistic medicines wont work. Thanks.

4 100+ mph is probably correct. I have it on good authority that to NOT speed along that and other unsecured routes is damned foolish; to drive below 50 mph (as claimed by Sgrena and the driver) is positively insane; speeds in excess of the century mark are not uncommon for military and civilian personnel and local nationals, especially at night. Warp-speeding beneath the overpasses is especially wise, as both explosive and non-explostive-but-deadly material is hurled at vehicles passing beneath. These fun facts have have been shared and corroborated in other forums on the internet of late. Coordination with the country team is essential for, among other things, safety of passage, and for that reason it is SOP for an operation of the sort carried out by the Italians. It was apparent from the beginnng that it was precisely this that they neglected to do. (Where was the MNF's chief Italian Liaison Officer on this? Did he himself drop the ball or was he kept in the dark as well?) Foreign minister Fini stated on Italian state television today that this coordination did not take place. (What about his earlier statements as reported in La Stampa? Well, sure there was a US military representative waiting at the airport. There ALWAYS is. He can speed you through customs and get you on the plane lickety-split, if need be. But you have to get there alive first. Sure there was authorization to conduct the operation. Authorization isn't coordination.) If this had been properly coordinated, the incident would never have happened and everyone would be safe and well. Did the Italian intel officer coordinate last time he undertook a hostage retrieval/transport/delivery? My guess would be that he chose not to but the operation came off, fortunately for him and his charges, without incident. Dumb, but he simply repeated what worked the first time.

5 US not fully informed about spy's reasons for being in Iraq: Italy www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=38354

6 Most U.S. police cars have cameras to record police/civilian contacts. What about U.S. checkpoints on a road in a combat zone? I'll bet you an "Instant Lunch*" that our guys caught this whole stunt on film. -Steve *Top Ramen qualifies only if it is microwaved.

7 Also check out Austin Bay's article on Route Irish Racing and Baghdad Checkpoints. Link (and post) at LGF.

8 Yeah, but 100mph is just a little far-fetched when thinking about the condition the road was in. "Fast" is a relative term.

9 Is this blog related to the "white house ties to gay prostitution"? It sure looks like it does... http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/billmaher021805gannon.mov

10 A lot of discussion about this on television. Italy is our ally and we are not going to willy nilly shoot at a car. I don't think they use mph over there (metric) and when you come to a checkpoint, whomever is in control of that checkpoint tells you exactly what to do, what not to do, and in some cases, give out flak jackets and helmets. Most likely her car was coming in the other direction. I also heard they never told the Americans or the coalition what was going down, so if a car is blasting down the road and does not slow down or stop at the checkpoint, the first thought is a suicide bomber. All they had to do was follow the rules, stopped, showed their credentials and probably would have gotten military escort to the airport. And based on the pictures and even where the arrows were showing gun shot holes, I still couldn't see the holes. Now this morning, when another (judge or governmental person, can't remember which) got gunned down and was killed today, you could see the rain of bullet holes in the car and in the windshield, so I don't think that what she said happened, really happened at all. Although Italy is not going to investigate, the US is, so it goes to show you just how much the Italians respect and work with the US and the rest of the coalition. Hopefully she'll shut up soon because whatever her agenda is, it's not working. Cindy

11 AFAIK, there are no police style cameras installed in the HMMWVs or other vehicles of regular line troops, *however* most units have several people with personal camcorders...so you might be right about there being video, albeit unofficial. Concerning speed, having driven that area (seemingly) hundreds of times, yes, you are a suicidal idiot if you drive below 70 MPH. However, you are also an idiot to approach a US checkpoint without slowing down, dimming your lights and proceeding *only* when signaled to do so.... Joes are very much like sucking in wind and pushing it back out again...and they realize that if they arenÂ’t careful, that action could come to an abrupt stop. So it becomes a simple matter of survival, kill or be killed.

12 As a Italian I am glad to confirm what reliapundit posted - Luciana Hyena has been completely disowned (even by the mainstream left), and in the last couple of days she and her boyfriend are pratically disappeared from the media. Thanks God for small things. Second, you can safely dismiss the mantra about most Italians having developed anti-American feeling because of this incident. This (aside for being pure bull****) is only useful as a case study of how good old Soviet-style disinformatsia can be still effective in the internet age. As for the shooting, here nobody with a brain is even taking into consideration Sgrena's story - for one thing the Italian judges in charge of the probe have already declared it is "devoid of supporting elements". The "discrepancies" mentioned by the Foreign Minister and Prime Minister are NOT based on Sgrena's ravings, but on the story of the other survivor (the car driver, who is a major of the Carabinieri), and what scarce data is available at the moment (for example the engine block of the car doesn't seem to have been shooted at, and most of the holes are on one side). My personal opinion is that our people did screw up by A) being too vague about their mission, and B) going directly to the airport instead of taking the hostage to the Italian Embassy. That said, I can't easily believe that C) two _extremely_ experienced SISMI agents who had done this kind of operation before, in Iraq, Afghanistan and other such places, and each one of which had probably seen more action than all the kids at the chekpoint put together would have run through a checkpoint at 160 km/h with an hostage onboard just for kicks. Again, this is just idle speculation based mostly on Occam's razor, hopefully the joint probe will sort things out.

13 Once again, the Italian Prime Minister says that the car was not speeding based on debriefings with the intelligence agent who was driving the car. Also learned - and related yesterday by Vice Premier Gianfranco Fini of the neo-fascist Alleanza Nazionale - the car had just passed through a flooded underpass, where speed was reduced, then had to make a 90 degree turn and was traveling no more than 30kph. Also, they were traveling with the dome light on for easier identification by authorities. The shooting incident was not at an establised checkpoint; it was a temporary checkpoint supposedly set up to insure the safe passage of John Negroponte. The car passed other checkpoints on the way to the airport with no incident.

14 Again anna, if the Italians had coordinated with the country team (which includes one person each from the DoD, the CIA, and State Department) they would NOT have come upon a checkpoint, even a recently established and temporary one, unaware. But responsibility for that coordination rested completely in the hands of the Italians. The Italian officer in charge of the operation, now dead, might have been a victim poor judgement and bad decisions not his own. If he was told NOT to coordinate the mission with the Americans responsible for ensuring the safety of such missions, then the others in the Italian government deserve blame for the outcome. Driving that route at night with the dome light on? This is something that would NOT have been recommended, much less required as a (far or near) identifier, by the US and is quite possibly the dumbest damn thing I've heard.

15 ANNA: Bullshit! Pure bullshit!

16 Bullets on the seat of her car. Ha, Ha, Ha. Moonbats will believe anything. To all you Italians. Don't listen to idiots complaining about the Mafia. The truth is we love them. Just look at our movies and TV. The Mafia rules. Great people. They even had the vision to start Las Vegas. Vacation capital of the world. Mafia make better Americans than muslims. Please send more. God bless Italy. Always sending us their best. Pizza, spaghetti, polenta, chicken cacciatore, meatballs, Sophia Loren. But the commie bitch, you can keep.

17 And don't forget those classic 60's spaghetti westerns, Greyrooster.

18 Yea man. Eastwood rules.

19 As does Lee Van Cleef!

20 Was going to mention him but couldn't remember his name. This colin baber babler. Done a search on her/it. What a lying piece of shit. Claims to have been in Fallujuh and personally witnessed Marines on roof tops shooting innocent civilians in cold blood for not reason. And that is just a start. COLLIN BABER: YOU ARE A LYING PIECE OF SHIT. You are despised on every internet site you place your lies. Low life is the only word for you.

21 Who is this Colon Babler??? Speaking of the Mafia: Let's pay the 25 million to one of their hitmen in order to put Osama out of his misery. And we'll throw in a pardon to one Family member of his choice who is currently under indictment for a crime, in appreciation.

22 Hmmmm. Why not. It worked in WW2.

23 Colon Babler: Thats good, real good. It took me a while. I'm still into the scotch.

24 Try bourbon (with a little ice and seltzer)!