Iraq - Sgrena and The power of lies

ANDREW BOLT on the lies of Sgrena.

Sgrena says this:

"The situation here is intolerable; the children are dying, people are dying of hunger in the streets, women are raped," she wailed dramatically, as if dictating one of her "reports". "The troops must be withdrawn. My life depends on it."

Pretty dramatic, eh? Then she says:

And how genuine had been her terror on that video, or her danger in captivity, given she now said her kidnappers were not killers, and "I was never treated badly" – indeed, "one in particular showed much attention to my desires"?

Which raises some questions.

But a few questions began to be asked. Why would the US want a crazy Italian propagandist dead? Why, if it wanted to kill her, did it fail? Why did her car show not 300 bullet holes, but just two? Why had Sgrena admitted her car was actually going so fast that the driver was "almost losing control", and that the Americans indeed "shone a flashlight at the car" before firing?

And that raises the big question. Why is she lying? Here is a clue.

Sgrena even boasted of teaching the kidnappers tactics: "I insisted on the fact that they could not ask the Italian Government to withdraw the troops. Their political go-between could not be the government but the Italian people, who were and are against the war."

She knew the Italian government would not withdraw the troops on its own. It would take the Italian people rising up to do that.

Sgrena failed in her attempt to smear US forces in Iraq.

Whatever, as Sgrena complained last week, "the refugees . . . would not listen to me. I had in front of me the accurate confirmation of the analysis of what the Iraqi society had become as a result of the war and they would throw their truth in my face". Fancy – Iraqis telling her, her, she didn't get it. Naughty natives.

Things went from bad to worse when she was kidnapped and now the terrorists have millions more to buy bombs and weapons with which to kill US and Iraqi forces as well as innocent civilians.

How to make amends for all these disasters? Lie. Lie and blame the US for a botched Italian rescue job. And the gullible Italians bought it.

Italy plans Iraq troop pull-out

Domestic opposition to Italy's involvement in Iraq intensified after the killing of an Italian agent by US troops in Baghdad earlier this month.

The surprise announcement came as Italy's lower house of parliament backed a recent Senate vote to extend the country's military presence in Iraq beyond June.

Bolt concludes:

But we know now how this jihad can be paid for, don't we? With the ransom paid by a feckless country for the release of a reckless "journalist" who will say any evil thing in her "good" cause.

One Italian is dead as a result of Sgrena's hate for America. How many Iraqis and Americans will die as a result of her lies?
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