Pirate's Cove

The Washington Times is now reporting that the ransom paid for Giulian Sgrena was in the $6 Million range, which is a jump from the initial $1 (which CNN didn’t seem fit to print). Furthermore,

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.

I still think we need to wait for the full facts of the story to be released, but, I’ll believe the American version over Sgrena’s version until proven otherwise. She is anti American Communist working for a communist paper, which is not rhetorical, but fact, and has been working to undermine the United States and it’s troops in Iraq at the benefit of terrorists. What happened to Sgrena is just too convenient. She was kidnapped under suspicious auspices, her tape came out right before a big vote in Italy, and she was released unharmed exactly a month after being captured. She has been, as stated, actively working against the war, and is about the last person the terrorists would capture. Then, on the day she is released, her car is shot up at a checkpoint, arousing the ire of Italian ministers and it’s people. Very convenient.

If you want the full, in depth details of the whole sordid affair, this post at the Jawa Report is the best place to go.

Update, 11:37am: Via Captain Ed, CNN has a translated transcript of what Sgrena stated about the attack. I would like to point out the same part he has:

The car kept on the road, going under an underpass full of puddles and almost losing control to avoid them. We all incredibly laughed. It was liberating. Losing control of the car in a street full of water in Baghdad and maybe wind up in a bad car accident after all I had been through would really be a tale I would not be able to tell. Nicola Calipari sat next to me. The driver twice called the embassy and in Italy that we were heading towards the airport that I knew was heavily patrolled by U.S. troops. They told me that we were less than a kilometer away…when…I only remember fire. At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up forever the cheerful voices of a few minutes earlier.

As Captain Ed has pointed out, the car was speeding fast enough that Sgrena was worried about it crashing. Furthermore,  "I only remember fire." What happened to her remembering the tanks firing on her? (Via The Jawa Report through the BBC)

We were on our way to the airport when the tanks started to strike against us and he tried to cover me and he was shot. He died and, me, I was safe but he was dead.

She needs to get her "story" straight. Furthermore:

We were not a hidden car. We were just a car on the road with lights and we were not running without any signal. So you have to ask the Americans because we don’t know what happened.

Hasn’t stopped her from claiming that the US Military targeted her now, has it?

Linked to the OTB Traffic Jam