Gulf News Channels Eason Jordan
To no one's great surprise, Gulf News has taken the Sgrena incident and used it to bolster Eason Jordan's allegations of deliberate assassinations of journalists by American forces in Iraq. Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics points readers to this one-sided editorial by Linda Heard, which takes the ultra-leftist Sgrena's self-contradictory narrative as gospel to smear the American military:
CNN's chief news executive Eason Jordan was forced to resign last month to quell the furore over his suggestion that US troops had "targetted" journalists.He was later to backtrack and apologise in an effort to keep his job but the damage had already been done.
The knives came out from all sides of the political spectrum with Jordan branded as being un-American and unpatriotic.
Now, just weeks later, the left-wing, anti-war Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena who was shot at and wounded by American forces in Iraq shortly after being released by her kidnappers, is echoing Jordan's assertion.
Look, even the Italian press isn't buying into Sgrena's story, although they understandably want an investigation into Nicola Calipari's death. Heard fails to explain, as does Sgrena, how an assassination attempt on a car with a "rain of bullets" managed to leave two of the three people inside alive, especially the target of their attempt -- and why the same people supposedly trying to silence her wound up getting her medical aid.
Just as with Eason Jordan, Heard makes baseless accusations with no supporting evidence -- except, in this case, a warning by the same people who kidnapped and held Sgrena hostage that the Americans didn't want her released. Perhaps Heard and Sgrena can get this brave terrorist to come forward and explain why. Oh, wait! He can't come forward, because he's too busy beheading Western civilians who came to Iraq to help rebuild the country. I can see why Sgrena and Heard consider him such a reliable source of information.
No one wanted to see Sgrena or Calipari injured or killed, except for the terrorists who would have gladly hacked her neck to pieces and danced in her blood had Italy not given them a fortune in ransom money to get her back. All of us want the Army to investigate the incident to ensure that if mistakes were made, they don't get made again. But at the same time, we're going to quit supporting any such investigation if baseless smears don't stop coming from Italian officals, their press, and they admit the possibility -- in fact, the probability -- that the Italians had more than a little responsibility for this incident themselves, and if they don't demand a parallel investigation of the decision that put millions of dollars into the hands of terrorists to free Sgrena in the first place.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on March 8, 2005 7:40 AM | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)
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