Disagreement

News Flash:

The United States and Italy failed to come to the same conclusions in the investigation of the shooting death of an Italian intelligence agent at a U.S. Army checkpoint in Baghdad last month, officials said Friday.

The March 4 shooting death of Nicola Calipari strained relations between the United States and Italy, where the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has never been popular with the public.

Italian security agent Nicola Calipari, 50, died of a gunshot to the head as he was shielding Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena from gunfire. The shooting occurred as their car approached a temporary U.S. military checkpoint near the Baghdad International Airport. Sgrena and another bodyguard, who was driving, were wounded.

"The investigators did not arrive at shared final conclusions even though, after jointly examining the evidence, they did agree on facts, findings and recommendations on numerous issues," said a statement from State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.

So here's the source of the disagreement, and it's really pretty simple: Calipari was part of a team that successfully secured the release of a well-known Italian journalist, Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Iraq [I'll point out that there have been very significant numbers of Americans kidnapped in Iraq under very similar circumstances, and we have had much less success getting them back]. As they were rushing Sgrena out of the country and back to her home, her car passed through several locations of security. Her driver and Calipari are said to both have alerted Iraqi and American officials that she was on her way through the country.

At one checkpoint, our troops shot her car, killed Calipari, and wounded Sgrena and another bodyguard.

So.

The disagreement seems to be this: America doesn't want to take the blame for the situation. Sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes those mistakes can be devastating, and difficult to comprehend. But really. How much does it take to say that this event was not a collateral damage event, and in fact that these checkpoints have had as many tragedies as they have had preventions?