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THE
ROVING EYE
Pentagon cut and paste
By Pepe Escobar
Talk
about rebel technology: the Pentagon this week was
not overwhelmed by a dirty bomb or a jet converted
into a missile, but by a simple cut and paste job.
Like anyone else, the Pentagon uses Adobe Acrobat.
At first, the 42 pages of the report which would
supposedly shed some light on the March 4 killing
of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari and the
wounding of kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena
in Baghdad showed up on the Centcom website as a
PDF file heavily censored with large sections
blacked out - including the significant omission,
among others, of the names of all the soldiers
involved in the shooting, as well as entire pages.
But because the Pentagon failed to save
the file properly, all it took was for someone to
cut and paste the document into a word-processing
application to give Italy and the rest of the
world access to the full, uncensored version.
The Pentagon was enveloped by huge clouds
of embarrassment. Its first reaction was a "no
comment". Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, a
press officer, repeatedly told Italian journalists
that if they wanted to find out how substantial,
uncensored sections of the Calipari report could
have been available "by mistake" on the Centcom
website last Saturday night, they had to contact
"the multinational force in Iraq". It took the
Pentagon practically the whole of Monday to rebuke
Italian journalists, until it offered the final
confirmation that it was an "error of procedure"
which didn't alter the essence of the report
anyway. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the
consequences were "more tactical than strategic".
Truths collide
The uncensored
Pentagon report at least allows the international
public to know that there were no less than 15,527
attacks on the occupation forces from July 2004 to
March 2005. In Baghdad alone, from November to
March 12, there were 2,404 attacks. These numbers
confirm that when US Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and his minions spin that the situation
in Iraq is under control they are essentially
lying. In the three months since the Iraqi
elections there may have been fewer American
casualties, but there were countless more
assassination attempts against the so-called Iraqi
security forces, all of them based on precise
intelligence. Every day, there are at least 20
bomb attacks in Baghdad alone, and at least 60
throughout Iraq.
As for the
Calipari/Sgrena affair, the Italian report -
written by diplomat Cesare Ragaglini and General
Pierluigi Campregher - contests point by point the
Pentagon report. And stealing a page from Pentagon
procedure, this is also a sanitized version:
embattled Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi went
overboard to salvage what he considers his
privileged relationship with Washington, to the
point, according to Italian daily Il Messagero,
that he "read, reread, corrected and tweaked the
report before handing it back to Italian military
intelligence".
Regardless, the Italian
report is devastating. Among the most important
issues: 1) American soldiers did not signal or
warn the Toyota Corolla carrying Calipari and
Sgrena - a fact confirmed even by a US official,
who sheepishly ventured that the Italian driver
did not understand the road signs "because they
are written in English and Arabic". Sgrena, as
well as the driver, a major with the Italian
carabinieri, have always been adamant: there were
no warning shots. 2) The soldiers at the
checkpoint fired away due to "stress and
inexperience". Specialist Mario Lozano was the man
who shot and killed Calipari. 3) The Toyota was
traveling at no more than 50 km/h (the Pentagon
says it was close to 100 km/h). The road was wet,
the major was driving with only one hand because
he was talking on a mobile phone, and to top it
all he was approaching a 90-degree turn. 4) The
crime scene was not isolated and secured. Evidence
simply "disappeared". 5) The Americans knew about
Calipari, and that he was on a mission in Baghdad,
even if they didn't know the details. US command
was informed by the Italians of a delicate mission
hours before the shooting, and they knew that
Sgrena had been released 25 minutes before
Calipari was killed.
But in the end,
nothing happened. Nobody is to blame - because by
definition the Pentagon can do no wrong. US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is happy,
Berlusconi is happy. The same would not apply to
Italian public opinion.
Simply
unaccountable
The 15th World Press Freedom
Day was celebrated this Tuesday. Paris-based
Reporters without Borders took the occasion to
issue its annual report. The numbers are grim: 53
journalists were killed - the largest number in
the past 10 years - and 107 thrown into jail in
2004.
Asia does not cut a good figure: 16
journalists were killed in 2004 - six of them in
the Philippines. Twenty-six journalists remain in
jail in China. In Myanmar, five journalists may
have been liberated in 2004, but one is partially
deaf and the other died a few days after leaving
prison. North Korea has no press freedom
whatsoever. In Turkmenistan, there's no press,
apart from that which hails the glory of Dear
Leader Saparmurat Niyazov.
But it's Iraq -
the alleged model for Middle East democracy - that
remains the most dangerous country in the world
for journalists: 19 were killed and 16 kidnapped
in 2004 - including Sgrena, who was writing for Il
Manifesto. Twelve fixers have been killed. Since
the start of 2005, four journalists have been
assassinated. Florence Aubenas of France's
Liberation was kidnapped along with her fixer on
January 5. Both are still missing.
Repression against journalists is
inextricably linked to the absence of law and
democracy. In Iraq, independent journalists are
just pawns in a power game, trying to give some
voice to the voiceless and establish some facts
dissimulated by clouds of propaganda. Repression
against journalists may also be inextricably
linked to superpower military impunity.
Sgrena believes she was the victim of a
Pentagon hit because she was trying to establish
what really happened in the offensive against
Fallujah in November, 2004. This may be very
difficult to prove. But the worldwide perception
of Pentagon unaccountability remains strong. The
Pentagon is unaccountable for the death of
Calipari and the wounding of Sgrena, unaccountable
for the killing of tens of thousands of civilians,
unaccountable for obliterating a whole city and
turning its residents into refugees, unaccountable
for Abu Ghraib. It will take more than a cut and
paste job for the whole truth to emerge.
To read the Pentagon's original, censored
report, click here.
For the
uncensored version, click here.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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