The Dog Didn't Bark

 
The initial reports in the MSM concerning the shooting incident involving hostage Giuliana Sgrena were unusually muted. Sgrena is an Italian reporter for the Communist Newspaper Il Manifesto, and was released by her kidnappers in Iraq last Friday, after the Italians reportedly paid a $10M ransom. The car carrying her to the Baghdad airport was stopped by gunfire after the driver failed to stop at a US military checkpoint. An Italian secret service agent was killed, and Sgrena was wounded.

It seemed that this would be an opportunity for the Legacy Media to exploit in the manner of Abu Ghraib. It had everything -- innocent victims, trigger-happy US military personnel, the vendetta by the cowboy USA against the European left, etc., etc.

But the initial stories on the incident were restrained by MSM standards, even on NPR. One was forced to conclude that there must have been more to the incident than met the eye.

Today's Washington Times opens a peephole into the story's background:

Italian agents likely withheld information from U.S. counterparts about a cash-for-freedom deal with gunmen holding an Italian hostage for fear that Americans might block the trade, Italian news reports said yesterday.

The decision by operatives of Italy's SISMI military intelligence service to keep the CIA in the dark about the deal for the release of reporter Giuliana Sgrena, might have "short-circuited" communications with U.S. forces controlling the road from Baghdad to the city's airport, the newspaper La Stampa said.

So the seamy details of the operation were kept from the United States, contributing to the final tragic events. At first Sgrena maintained that the car had been deliberately targeted by the soldiers at the checkpoint, but later backed off that assertion:

Miss Sgrena, whose newspaper ardently opposes Italy's deployment of 3,000 troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition, offered no direct evidence to support the charge and toned down the suggestion in a later interview with Reuters.

"If this happened because of a lack of information or deliberately, I don't know, but even if it was due to a lack of information, it is unacceptable," she said from her hospital room.

Thus we have tragedy as farce: pay ransom to the terrorists, hide the facts from the military, speed through the checkpoint, and blame America for the final result.

Is it any wonder that the Left is discredited in the eyes of sane and rational people?