U.S. troops mistakenly target Italy envoy

[joeybee12]

Jesus Christ!

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/09/19/italy_envoy/index.html

Sept. 19, 2003 | 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.

[sistersofmercy]

1. Oh my, this just keeps getting worse.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Diplomatic incident

And expect this one to be shoved down and not mentioned
again, like taht shooting of the Russian convoy during the
"closing days of major combat operations"