Eason Jordan's legacy

Why was the convoy carrying Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena attacked? The Arab News favours malice over incompetence:

One possible explanation for the attack on the car carrying the Italians is that trigger-happy US troops, terrified of car bombers, fired the minute they suspected the vehicle was a danger to them ... If this is what happened, then it is a demonstration of the indiscipline and poor training of US soldiers which has in the past resulted in a number of similar attacks, including the slaying of the Iraqi occupants of a car rushing a pregnant woman to a maternity hospital.

Hmmm, firing at a car perceived to be a threat. Totally unreasonable. With the notoriously undisciplined and poorly trained American soldiers it's safe to assume they fired at anything that moved.

Regardless, the incompetence angle is merely an intro to the editorial, its real contention is that Sgrena was targeted to settle old scores:

There is, however, the more sinister explanation which is that the Americans wanted Sgrena dead. A senior correspondent for the Communist daily, Il Manifesto in Rome, the journalist has been no friend of the US invasion and occupation. US troops have killed journalists before. Two cameramen, a Ukrainian and a Spaniard, were slain in April 2003 when a US shell was fired into the Palestine Hotel, a known base of international journalists opposite the Baghdad Sheraton. Earlier an Al-Jazeera correspondent was killed when the TV station’s local office was struck by a US missile.

The American military has not taken kindly to foreign journalists who refuse to involve themselves in America’s well-oiled media-relations machine. When Sgrena was kidnapped on Feb. 4, other journalists were told by US officials that the event highlighted the danger of working outside their Green Zone-focused loop. There was also apparently grim satisfaction that a journalist who was so opposed to US policy should have become a victim of the insurgents. The conclusion of the sinister explanation must therefore be that the Americans were settling the score with a foreign commentator whose published views infuriated them. Yet it seems incredible that even the American military could be this crass.

Sure, it's now US policy to create international incidents by killing insignificant foreign journalists to stop them being so ... annoying. If so, the Guardian might want to think about investing in one of those really deep bomb-proof bunkers the Iranians are so keen on.

Update: Sgrena says the attack was likely no accident:

"The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known," she told Sky TG24 television, her voice hoarse and shaky. "The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostage, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."

Americans really are evil bastards, aren't they?