5/01/2005 10:36:00 AM|||Nathan Moore|||

What I consider to be nothing less than an anti-American edit by one of the largest newspapers in the country has been uncovered by the enterprising blogger at Patterico's Pontifications. The debate regarding the killing of Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence officer who was escorting the dubiously monickered "journalist" Giuliana Sgrena, is still ongoing, and continues to be a point of contention in American/Italian relations. This is understandable, and it is an incident that deserves serious review (side note - as the story edited was originally distributed by Reuters, I am honoring the global news organization by using "scare quotes" in an excessively agressive manner, e.g. al Qaeda "terrorists" in Iraq targeted another police station today. Hence, the term "journalist").

Part of the debate centers on whether or not the car that was carrying the recently freed Sgrena was proceeding at a high rate of speed toward the American checkpoint. The Italians say the car was maintaining a usual 25-30 mph speed, and the American soldiers at the checkpoint state that the car was speeding, apparently with no intention to stop.

In Iraq, speeding cars often explode. Speeding cars that are heading toward American or Iraqi staffed checkpoints, especially so.

The crux of this incident, whether Americans were intentionally targeting a known unfriendly "journalist", or whether the car carrying said "journalist" was operating unsafely in a war zone, where the rules of procedure are well-known to those who have operated in Iraq for any extended amount of time, is still being debated.

The LA Times seems to think that the issue of speed, if determined, should not, for any purpose, or at any time, be resolved to support the American version of these events.

Coincidentally, an American satellite was viewing the area where the incident occurred when it happened. From the satellite data, the speed of the car can be determined. The speed as determined from GPS coordinates supports....drum roll please...the American story that the care was speeding at 55-60 mph, justifying firing upon the vehicle in an act of self-defense. With this new information, the conclusion we now lean to is that the American soldiers were acting appropriately, as they were trained to do, and the Italian "journalist" and her entourage were acting arrogantly, as such "journalists" are prone to do.

For reasons that can only be attributed to grandiose incompetence or a deliberate anti-American spin, The LA Times version of the story leaves out the new satellite data.

The LA Times has done something I never thought possible. It has proven able to be more anti-American than Reuters - a feat that was once reserved only for certain globally named papers in Paris, a plethora of tabloids in the UK, and Pravda pre-1990.

|||111496323786675017|||Why Not Question Patriotism?