[Peace-discuss] mistake- not hardly!!!!!! RAMBO'S

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

U.S. TROOPS ARE SHOOTING ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT WEAR U.S. UNIFORM--- standard 
procedure-   and each time it is a mistake?     target acquisition and firing 
a weapon is never a mistake- 

doug


U.S. Troops Mistakenly Target Italy Envoy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 
Filed at 10:29 p.m. ET

ROME (AP) -- A U.S. soldier in northern Iraq mistakenly fired on a car 
carrying an Italian diplomat heading up U.S. efforts to recover Iraq's looted 
antiquities, killing the man's Iraqi interpreter, apparently because the driver 
wasn't following orders fast enough, the diplomat said Friday.

The Italian, Pietro Cordone, who is the senior adviser for cultural affairs 
of the U.S. provisional authority and the top Italian diplomat in the country, 
suffered a superficial wound in the shooting Thursday on the highway between 
Mosul and Tikrit.

An Italian foreign ministry official in Rome said it appeared the car's 
driver did not understand signals from the American troops, and that the Americans 
didn't understand what the car was trying to do. U.S. officials expressed 
regret over what happened, the Foreign Ministry said.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. George Krivo, told reporters in Baghdad 
that details on what happened were still sketchy.

``I don't have the details yet on that incident and we will work during the 
day today to find out the details and get them out to you,'' he said.

Cordone, interviewed on Italian state television, said it appeared an 
American soldier fired at the car because the vehicle didn't get back into its lane 
fast enough after trying to pass a column of American vehicles near the turnoff 
for Tikrit.

The diplomat, who was seated in the back of the car with his wife, said the 
soldier motioned that the car should get back into the lane, then fired one 
shot.

``Perhaps there was a few seconds of lateness in carrying out the maneuver'' 
to get back into the lane, Cordone said.

``Surely there was a mistaken interpretation of some movement by my car, even 
though, I repeat, we were on a highway in which American military police cars 
and my car were traveling normally, following the flow of traffic,'' Cordone 
said.

``The shot went through the interpreter's heart, went out his back and grazed 
me on my arm,'' the diplomat told reporters, looking dazed a few hours after 
the shooting. ``We didn't violate any checkpoint.''

Cordone expressed hope that U.S. authorities would give compensation to the 
interpreter's family, including a wife and two children.

Cordone, who was born in Egypt and has spent his diplomatic career in the 
Arab world, was appointed in May to head up the coalition office responsible for 
finding and restoring Iraq's looted antiquities.

He was at the Iraqi National Museum in June when three men returned the Vase 
of Warka, a 5,000-year-old white limestone vessel that is one of the most 
valuable of the museum's artifacts.

The museum, once the home of rare Islamic texts and priceless, millennia-old 
collections from the Assyrian, Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations, was 
plundered in the chaos that followed the fall of Baghdad on April 9.

The destruction triggered an international uproar, with many curators and 
archaeologists from around the world blaming the United States for failing to 
protect the institution.