Berlusconi condemns reported killing of Italian hostage in Iraq

[Judi Lynn]

Berlusconi condemns reported killing of Italian hostage in Iraq
By Alessandra Rizzo, Associated Press, 8/27/2004 04:27

ADVERTISEMENT

ROME (AP) Premier Silvio Berlusconi vowed Italian troops would not leave Iraq even and condemned the reported killing of an Italian hostage as an act that brings ''us back to the dark ages of barbarity.''

Late Thursday, the Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera reported it had received a video that appeared to show the killing of Enzo Baldoni, a 56-year-old freelance journalist.

The station chief declined to broadcast the footage out of sensitivity to viewers, said Jihad Ballout, the station's spokesman. Government officials said they could not confirm that militants had killed Baldoni but were looking into the report.

''There are no words to describe this inhuman act that with one blow wipes out centuries of civilization to bring us back to the dark ages of barbarity,'' the premier said in a statement.
(snip/...)

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/240/world/Berlusconi_condemns_reported_k:.shtml

[Aidoneus]

1. "the dark ages of barbarity"

His buddies raping and shooting everything that moves--turning cities to rubble and filling fresh graves with hundreds of martyrs--represents civilization and progress, but this stops his presses?

Killing journalists is a stupid move on the part of whoever did it (most reasonable resistance commanders, the elder Fallujan sheiks and Sayyid Muqtada as-Sadr, for instance, have instead reached out to have them freed rather than executed), but I don't recall a peep out of Benitosconi when so many others of them were shot by the military forces of his friend Il-Dunce.

[paulk]

3. if there is any good to come of this, it will be the defeat of Berlusconi

in the next general elections...

Balzoni was a popular journalist and blogger in Italy. Both my wife and I have ties to that country, and try to keep up with what's going on there...

http://bloghdad.splinder.com/

A tragedy all the way around. This whole war is a tragedy.

I have often wondered myself who is behind things like this, they seem designed only to throw fuel on the fire.

[JaySherman]

2. Never mind the fact

that if he hadn't put troops in there to kiss *'s ass in the first place, this never would have happened.

[Radius]

4. That Justafies

killing a journalist? I guess the killers are short on american or italian troops to shoot at.

They are using the press to call attention to their cause by killing a civillian. Trying to get the italians to back out by killing a reporter. That is wrong.

[JaySherman]

6. It's completely hyportical for Burlesconi to express any sympathy

Given that he has put his country in position for this to happen. Doesn't justify the killing at all.

[daleo]

5. There is a fairly famous political cartoon from the Mussolini era

This is pre-WW II, when Mussolini was bombing villages in Ethiopia during the Italian colonization of North Africa. One panel shows a bunch of grass thatch huts, obviously an African village and is labeled "Barbarism". The next shows the same huts blown up with huge craters in the ground, Italian warplanes flying away in the distance, and is labeled "Civilization".

Bersculoni's mentality is nothing new.