Right-Wing Bloggers' Fake Sgrena Car Photo
Read Our Latest: The Sgrena Hit:
How They Did It, and Why
Right-Wing Bloggers' FakeSgrena Car Photo
AP Linked to Disinfo on Shooting
by Fintan Dunne, Editor
BreakForNews.com March 6th, 2005
Right-wing bloggers are circulating a photo purportedly showing the car in which Giuliana Sgrena was wounded and her rescuer Nicola Calipari was fatally shot. The photo is being used to discredit Sgrena's account of the shooting.
It shows a four-door sedan which has only the driver's side window broken and no overt bullet damage to the bodywork. That contradicts the "hail of bullets" described by Sgrena and others. And it boosts the US military's case that the incident was just a "mishap."
At first glance the picture seems legitimate. Captions which accompany the photo on blogs say it's a still frame taken from an Associated Press video about the shooting at Baghdad Airport. These captions also give a source link to versions of the video on Yahoo and on AP Feedroom.
They make comments like:
"Unless this car is made out of thick metal and bullets bounce off of it, I don't think this car was shot at more than 10 times." [source]
"I ask you, does the car above look like it was “riddled with bullets? Either our soldiers are terrible shots or some people are being pretty loose with the facts in this story." [source]
But if you are suspicious that the car seems far too little damaged, you might -as I did- check major search engines for such a high-profile photo. On the Yahoo News Photo site -I quickly found the same vehicle photographed from another angle. This time with an Iraqi man standing beside the vehicle.
The Yahoo photo caption says:
An Iraqi driver stands near his damaged vehicle at the site of the kidnapping of an Italian journalist outside al-Nahrain University in central Baghdad, February 4, 2005.... Gunmen pulled up alongside her vehicle, forced her driver and an Iraqi journalist with her out of the vehicle at gunpoint and then drove off with Sgrena, the sources said. The driver said that the gunmen hit his car as they were rushing away from the scene following the kidnapping. (Akram Saleh/Reuters)
Tracking back the "car photo" story through blogs --which credited each other as the tale passed around, the feeding chain included thepoliticalteen.net, sayanythingblog.com, [also 1 2] and the source of it all littlegreenfootballs.com.
You will gain some insight into the political flavor of littlegreenfootballs.com -the blog which started the fake story- from this comment in a related thread on the blog:
"Journalists writing for commie rags are not impervious to bullets if they disregard the American military in a war zone. One would think Sgrena would bemore cautious having just been released as a hostage."
Here, at even as the story continued to ooze across the blogsphere, littlegreenfootballs.com had already retracted their claim it was Sgrena's car.
And they were blaming Associated Press for it all, because in the AP video, the car clip from the February 5th, kidnapping was misleading synchronized with the voice-over describing the Baghdad airport shooting of Sgrena:
"[The video has] a medium shot of this car, changing to a closeup, as the voice-over says, "Coalition forces fired on a vehicle that was approaching a checkpoint at a high rate of speed." ...So we apparently have a false alarm here, triggered by a highly misleading AP video. This is not a photo of the car that ran the checkpoint. [source]
But even as one piece of disinfo is retracted that last sentence sows another:
"This is not a photo of the car that ran the checkpoint."
There was no checkpoint. Sgrena recounts that a patrol fired on their car within sight of the terminal building at the airport - not on the road to the airport. This is just a continuation of earlier disinformation by the US command in Iraq.
The AP video is disturbingly edited. And the little green footballs have been suspiciously inept. [see below]
But that isn't stopping the popularity of disinformation which serves only to cover-up the likely assassination bid on a journalist --who was at the time of her imminent departure from Iraq, set to beecome a heroine of the anti-war movement in Italy and a considerable obstacle to the
US/UK and Italian political mafia and their proto-imperial objectives in Iraq.
[Note] Littlegreenfootballs kickstarted the "outrage" against Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). Luckily [ahem], an LGF reader was in a community forum audience to record Hinchley saying the fake CBS memos were planted by Karl Rove to discredit Dan Rather. Thanks 'pia'
See our latest investigation:
The Sgrena Hit :
How They Did It, and Why
posted by FintanDunne
at 8:34 pm
29 Comments:
LGF realized the AP labelling of that white car as the one transporting Sgrena and the Italian agents to BIAP was misleading, and made a correction within a few hours. They corrected it DAYS before you made this even more misleading post.
If you have any ethics or sense of accuracy and fairness, you will make corrections yourself.
Adding for clarity;
LGF discovered the truth about the white car and how it belonged to an Iraqi who was on the scene of Sgrena's abduction last month on their own.
Nobody called them on it. They realized the truth and corrected themselves within hours.
I challenge you to do the same thing.
This was a botched assassination of a journalist.
The CIA/Mossad have a track record of silencing us, regardless of origins. Make trouble for the regime, and you are dead. Commie, conservative, independent: tell the truth and die. The truth has no boundries. Regardless of political stripe, our job is to get it out.
Pearl, Webb, Thompson, and others. All killed for reporting the truth. All different except for their dedication to the truth as journalists.
This failed murder will have ramifications that the regimes in power drastically underestimated.
They cannot kill us all. This is fact. This spells their ultimate demise. We will continue to report, regardless of the consequences.
Robert S. Finnegan
Managing Editor
Southeast Asia News
seanews1@yahoo.com
Here in Italy, while the media are trying to suffucate this, people starts to realize how bad the situation went in Iraq and probably Berlusconi will have to retreat the troups that no-italian ever wanted (2 milions in the streets of Rome against the War). The Leftists and anarchists are organizing propaganda against U.S. Government and Corporation (Today i've found in my supermarket, in a small town in northernitaly, banners against american corporations on american products). That's nice because this is a people's initiative against corporate america, and everybody here in Italy, even if berlusconi's media are trying to hide it, is trying to protest against this absurd coalition.
Sites like LGF, like the American military or the American Government have until now not been particularly concerned with facts, on any subject for that matter.
So we have had a lot of assassinations carried out by US army as a matter of policy on unembedded (meaning independent, meaning uncontrolled, meaning dangerous to the very costly propaganda effort, meaning in short unlike anything imaginable by LGF-cons) journalists.
Precisely as E. Jordan remarked in a moment of unguarded honesty. But
unlike LGF bullshitters however critical, thinking people need evidence and research, not Army statements, horse manure from White House whores and crude photoshoppers.
" This was a botched assassination of a journalist."
LOL, good one.
You're a dishonest nut, you know that?
I see that Say Anything blog has issued a correction while you haven't. LGF also added a correction within hours. You haven't.
Oh,..and take off your tin foil hat. This wasn't an attempted assassination. If it was, we wouldn't have rushed her to the hospital. Get a grip on reality.
likwidshoe
to michelangelo from italy:
from the series "we're racist, but not idiots": the lega nord minister Calderoli said that the iraqi resistants may have tried to frame americans by issuing an alarm about a bomb-car.... care to think about this hypothesis, michelangelo, let's care?
about "2 million people marching against war" it would be useful to remember to all that italy has more than 50 millions of citizens who doesn't give a damn fuss neither about war or italian opposition paranoias...
servus
This as funny as a WTC 911 skydiver !!
I love to see the right wing nuts posting crap like LGF.
To funny !!
"If it was, we wouldn't have rushed her to the hospital. Get a grip on reality."
You didn't do anthing except watch lot of Fox and start using the term "we" when communicating about the actions of American forces. The "we" association is part of a propaganda mechanism to allow you to have vested interest in the actions of these warcrimminals.
Just like George Bush saying he one the election so Americans support torture, killing babies, killing women, using DU and chemical weapons, etc... Did "we" do those things, or is someone trying to make us feel complicit and more likely to right them off as accidental, or frat pranks, instead of truly digesting the horror American troops & spooks are committing at the behest of the Bush's coroporate enablers. The Bush family has power because it delivers profits at any cost except for them. Who's collecting those profits? Not you or me or we.
Who's committing those crimes? Not you or me or we. Who's tax dollars are paying for those to be committed...that is the only thing "we" have to do with this.
Unless of course the Anonymous above is Dick Chenney weighing in on this message board...and if that's the case, FUCK YOU DICK.
uhh...
I see the "political teen" blog is run by someone named Ian Schwartz.
At his website today, in addition to finally getting it right and posting a heavily-cropped photo of the actual car that the Italian journalist was riding in when it was savagely (and knowingly) attacked (he makes a snide comment about it looking better, Schwartz also leads off his blog with a report about an amputee who, after having lost a limb in Iraq already, is now back in Iraq. "True patriotism," writes Schwartz.
Can anyone tell me for how long Schwartz himself served in the US armed forces? (I just know he MUST have, of course.)
an Anonymous coward said, "You didn't do anthing except watch lot of Fox and start using the term "we" when communicating about the actions of American forces."
Oh! The Fox News boogeyman! Hahaha. How pathetic.
Unless of course the Anonymous above is Dick Chenney weighing in on this message board...and if that's the case, FUCK YOU DICK.Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Loosen that tin foil hat anonymous coward. It will hurt your head.
-likwidshoe
Bushistanian whores have such a fascination for 'tin foil hats,' using it whenever they can. (Or not, don't matter.) I notice practically none of them are able to write down two whole sentences without using their tin foil hats line. Now why is that? And why is it never accompanied by valid arguments?
Oebermass, Netherlands.
Without making a comment on the posts on this string, I must comment on the sad misuse of correct syntax, grammar and spelling by the participants, both American and not. If you're going to take the time to deride somebody pursuant to their personal opinion and/or agenda, a dictionary might be helpful. Not a sermon, just a thought.
Sincerely,
Karl Rove
Actual car:
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Politica/2005/03_Marzo/08/calipari.shtml
Doubt it was speeding at 100mph when shot since there is no crash damage. Seems to have been hit from the right rear.
BGF retracted their analysis about the photos a while ago. However, the new car being pushed by the media as the vehicle seems to have no bullet holes in the visible portion of the body either.
See the car pictures located at http://www.repubblica.it/2003/e/gallerie/cronaca/autosgrena/1.html
The poster just above me said hit right rear. The picture he is referring to appears to be the left front side of a left-hand-drive vehicle. Note the mirror and the windsheild wiper, and the inset for the radio antenna in the roof pillar (which always points to the rear of the car).
These pictures are pretty strange, because La Repubblica was claiming yesterday that the vehicle was a nondescript truck deliberately chosen for its anonymous looks; what we have here is a fairly new (by Iraqi standards) Opel sedan. I wonder if there are a lot of wrong photos out there.
La Republicca indicated also that the car is being shipped to Italy for examination by the magistrates; we'll certainly get a good look at it then.
Unfortunately, we can only see one side of the vehicle in the new set of pictures, but there does not appear to be extensive damage to the side we can see. There appears to be a single bullet hole in the windshield directly in front of the driver, who has had his faith in the Devine seriously re-enforced by the fact that not one of the 300-400 bullets fired at the vehicle by the assassination team actually hit him.
Right Wing Nut 2.
You are really dumber than a fence post. AP screwed up the picture of the car and all the right wing bloggers corrected the problem as soon as they found out.
Your conspiracy theory reeks of the trash the DUmmies of Democratic Underground spew on a daily basis.
In order to fake a photo, right wing blogs needed to be in Iraq and intentionally take the photo of the wrong car. Just because the AP screwed the pooch, does not mean that there was a vast right wing conspiracy to fake images of the car.
The fact that the actual car has less damage pretty much destroys your case because if they wanted to fake a picture for the purpose of lying, they would have found a pristine automobile.
Going off the subject, do you support our troops? Because those loony e-mails you sent to LGF reek of treason.
Robert S. Finnegan has been drinking a couple hundred gallons of conspiracy theorist Kool Aid.
What a freaking wacko he is.
Trust me, if we wanted to kill members of the press in Iraq, there'd be none of you left.
I will explain it so that you liberals get it. If the CIA or Military ordered her killed, why didn't the soldiers walk up and kill every passenger in the car instead of assisting them after the accident?
That kind of throws a big frigging wrench in your theory Mr. Managing Editor of Southeast Asia News.
You are a leftist paranoid, moonbat, nutcase like so many of your friends in the press have become.
They use "tin-foil hat" alot because the left seems to be obsessed with conspiracy theories. "zomg stolen election, zomg war for oil, zomg haliburton, zomg bush planned 9/11, zomg puppet government in iraq, zomg things are changing for the better in the middle east, blame bush anyway!, zomg bush used secret weapon to cause tsunami, zomg bush is going to suck all our brains out after raping our families and shooting our pets. zomg karl rove planted the documents"
It's really annoying to see these unsubstantiated conspiracies running around, and all the lefties sticking to them, even though they have absolutely no proof of anything. It's just bitch bitch bitch, whine whine whine. All with a tin-foil hat on.
Some posters here seem to want to "protect America" by perceiving Americans and American troops and America's leaders and American forms of service/goods-providers (corporations) AS EVIL.
If there were an EVIL mind-ray circling the Earth, and beaming its mind-control waves down, to make 'good' humans become 'blood-thirsty, child-killing, anti-Iraqi-freedom, capitalist thugs', then perhaps a tinfoil hat could keep out the rays.
Then again, such a tinfoil hat might pick up the mind-control rays from the MotherShip of the Aliens, beaming THEIR waves onto Earth and trying to get us all to support "freedom, the pursuit of happiness, and individual responsibility", so wearing tinfoil hats means 'damned if you do, and damned if you don't'
For years, liberals thrived on exageration. Why do you think Sgrena told the tall-tale of "400 rounds" being levelled on the car? Like most liberals, she valued style over substance. The problem is, when the actual car was found, it was spotless. Isn't it amazing how a majority of their half-assed claims crumble under the weight of something nutty like....the TRUTH?
Okay, just so that I can get the latest conspiracy theory of the left, right:
1) The US Army, the largest possessor of bullets and other death-causing weapons in the world, wanted to kill an Italian journalist because (this was unheard of) she was a journalist that was against the war.
2) Upon somehow hearing news of her release (Did the Italian intelligence agency call us right away from his cell phone?) an all-points-bulletin goes out to the US military to find and kill her. Not one soldier is upset about this order, or complains about it. Everyone complies and keeps their mouth shut.
3) Seeing her car approaching (the Italian intelligence officer also provided an advance description of his car) the US army aimed 400 bullets at her car (Sgrena's number), and they missed her.
4) After having "botched" the "assassination", we picked her up, patched her up, and sent her off to Italy. (Instead of just continuing to pour bullets, and possibly a grenade or two, into her and the car.)
The further assertion is that the guy from LGF *knows* this, and is trying to cover it up. (The American military is careful to co-ordinate its offical cover-ups with the blogs of graphic artists.)
Oh, and your other conclusion is that the car never crashed, since it doesn't have "damage" on it. Which means that after the car was hit, the last act of the dying man was to slowly apply the brakes, but only after he threw himself on Sgrena who was in the seat next to him.
Correct?
John
OK Moonbats listen up! Your overwraught thread of conspiracies, lies and misrepresentations is over.
And it has been put to an end by none other than Ms Sgrena herself as quoted by the 12 March 2005 issue of the Independent newspaper.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=619206
And I quote:
"The Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was wounded by American fire last Friday soon after being released by kidnappers in Baghdad, has said that she does not think that the Americans were trying to kill her. "I never said that they wanted to kill me," she said on a television talk show, "but the mechanics of what happened were those of an attack."
In an interview with The Independent, her partner, Pier Scolari, said: "None of us is so stupid as to think the Americans did it on purpose. But the dynamic was that of an ambush and we want a convincing explanation of what happened, because the first American explanation was totally false."
Now you all can go back to debating how far you must walk before you fall off the edge of the flat earth.
Let me reply to Marc first:
Marc: "before you fall off the edge of the flat earth."
Marc: Your overwraught... lies and misrepresentations.."
This is just mudslinging. Not argument.
As to the substance of you point, isn't it interesting that Giuliana and Pier said:
Giuliana: "but the mechanics of what happened were those of an attack."
Scolari: "the dynamic was that of an ambush"
Which actually supports the point we made in the article.
And not everybody is convincved it was mere misfortune.
In the previous comment Anonymous said:
Anon: "1) The US Army, wanted to kill an Italian journalist because (this was unheard of) she was a journalist that was against the war."
No. I never said that you may have noticed.
The hit on Guiliana was not primarily because of the ani-US war tactics reporting.
Annon: "2) ..an all-points-bulletin goes out to the US military to find and kill her."
Give me a break - a special ops hit team woul;d do it - not the whole US Army!
Anon: "the US army aimed 400 bullets at her car (Sgrena's number), and they missed her."
No. They did not want to kill the whole car full of Italian agents.
Even Intel has ethics, or rather.. rules of engagment.
Anon: "The further assertion is that the guy from LGF *knows* this, and is trying to cover it up."
Show me where I said that? What I actually said was: "the little green footballs have been suspiciously inept."
Meaning: who could be really so dumb as to believe they had spotted the Sgrena car in an AP video but AP didn't realize they had a photo of the car to publish??? Answer: Nobody. Which implies that either LGF didn't care if it was true or they deliberately seeeded it as disinfo on the Internet and the correction was just to cover the action.
Actually I think Karl Rove was behind the botched hit. They intentionally didn't shoot her so that her deranged rantings about the hundreds of bullets and the evil US could make it into the world news and discredit the legitimate and wise complaints about the evil bush-chimp-hitler's war.
Oh, Sorry, that prior was sarcasm. :)
It's time to close Wagnews down. It's degenerated into just another forum for rightwing ratbags to use in their control freak war against liberalism. They simply cannot tolerate the slighest divergence or dissent from Bushcon orthodoxy, can they?
"time to close WagNews Down" ?
Chill, dude. Most people know that genuine or planted disrupters abound on comment threads. They discount them. You should too.
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