- The Bush administration took specific legal steps that
cleared a U.S. Special Forces assassination team in Iraq from any future
criminal proceedings arising from their assassination of Italian SISMI
intelligence number two man Nicola Calipari.
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- Calipari, the deputy head of SISMI and an experienced
Iraqi expert, was accompanying freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad
International Airport when their Toyota Corolla was fired on by well-trained
U.S. sharpshooter assassins. Calipari was on the phone to the office of
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome, where his wife also works,
when he was shot in the head. Sgrena and the driver, a Carabiniere officer,
were injured in the attack.
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- Pentagon officials claim the car was speeding past a
checkpoint and that shots were fired only into the engine block. The Italians
claim the interior light in the car was on, the car was traveling at only
30 miles per hour, and prominently displayed the Italian flag. Italian
intelligence officials also believe that the Americans identified the Italian
vehicle because National Security Agency systems had intercepted Calipari's
cell phone signals and triangulated its specific location.
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- The legal protection for the American assassination team
stems generally from the refusal of the Bush administration to recognize
the International Criminal Court (ICC), but more recently and specifically
from a new counterintelligence doctrine outlined by National Counterintelligence
Executive Michelle Van Cleave, who was once a member of Ronald Reagan's
National Security Council staff.
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- That strategy, announced by Van Cleave at a March 5 speech
at Texas A&M University in College Station, calls for "attacking"
foreign intelligence services by using counterintelligence operations.
The immunity from ICC jurisdiction, the new counterintelligence strategy,
the Pentagon's approval of special assassination teams in Iraq and elsewhere,
as well as approval of a CIA "Worldwide Attack Matrix," now authorizes
U.S. military forces and intelligence agents to assassinate those deemed
a threat to the United States.
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- Calipari and Sgrena, according to well-placed Italian
sources, HAD IRREFUTBALE EVIDENCE OF U.S. WAR CRIMES IN THE SIEGE OF FALLUJAH,
involving the use of napalm, mustard gas, and nerve gas. Sgrena works for
the Italian daily, Il Manifesto.
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- Calipari's intelligence collection efforts and previous
hostage rescue missions in Iraq were supplemented by assistance from the
Vatican's own intelligence services, which maintained close ties to Eastern
Catholic members of Saddam's government, including former Foreign Minister
Tariq Aziz. Calipari's brother is a well-connected monsignor in the Vatican
Secretariat.
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- Calipari maintained liaison with Iraqi resistance fighters,
who were formerly members of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, to secure
Sgrena's release. This did not sit well with the Bush administration.
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- According to Italian sources, the ex-Republican Guard
members have worked with Italian intelligence to combat the alleged al
Qaeda and Abu Musad Al Zarqawi "terrorists" who took Americans,
Italians, and others hostage. The Bush administration and its neo-conservative
architects of the Iraq war do not want it widely known that the Iraqi resistance
is split between ex-Republican Guards, who have worked with the Italians,
and fanatic Islamists.
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- The U.S. hit team wanted to kill Calipari and Sgrena
because THEY HAD INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE IRAQI RESISTANCE AND HOW SOME
LOYALISTS of the U.S.-supported Iraqi regime may have cooperated with the
alleged Zarqawi forces to seize Western hostages and decapitate them on
videos for propaganda purposes. Many of the beheading videos show masked
men who do not appear to be extremist Muslim Iraqis or even Arabs from
their build, stance, sporting of jewelry, and, in one case, speaking Russian.
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- According to Italian sources, the ex-Republican Guardsmen
view the alleged Zarqawi and his alleged al Qaeda allies as "monsters,"
but also know that the ex-Republican Guard members, many of whom are secular
Muslims, had nothing to do with the hostage taking and beheadings as often
claimed by neoconservatives in the Bush administration.
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- Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based journalist and
columnist, and the co-author of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency
of George Bush II."
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- The views expressed herein are the writers' own and do
not necessarily reflect those of Online Journal.
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- E-mail editor@onlinejournal.com
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