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The New Editor has tracked down an English translation of an article written by a Dutch reporter— Harald Doornbos—who was sitting next to Sgrena on the plane flying into Baghdad right before she was kidnapped. It’s extremely illuminating:
Be careful not to get kidnapped,’ I told the female Italian journalist sitting next to me in the small plane that was headed for Baghdad. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That won’t happen. We are siding with the oppressed Iraqi people. No Iraqi would kidnap us.’
... ‘The Americans are the biggest enemies of mankind,’ the three women behind me had told me, for Sgrena travelled to Iraq with two Italian colleagues who hated the Americans as well.
...’You don’t understand the situation. We are anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, communists,’ they said. The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers, the enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear.
(Doornbos tells them they’re out of their mind.)
But they knew better. When we arrived at Baghdad Airport, I was waiting for a jeep from the American army to come pick me up. I saw one of the Italian women walking around crying. An Iraqi had stolen her computer and television equipment. They were standing outside shivering, waiting for a cab to take them to Baghdad.
They were told they were about to get kidnapped, responded that nothing of the kind would happen, and continued to disregard the danger they’d been warned of even after all their gear had been stolen. It is worth noting that the root of the word, “ignorance,” is “to ignore.”
Per The New Editor:
So there we have it. A reporter from a communist newspaper in Italy, thinking she has nothing to fear from Iraqi insurgents because of her anti-American stance, gets kidnapped, and as a result, lots of time, money, manpower, and ultimately—tragically—a life is expended because her adherence to a failed political ideology renders her incapable of seeing reality. Yet, the system she so loathes secures her release. As if to cover for her own foolishness, she now claims the US purposely tried to have her killed. If her political viewpoint offered any hint, it would seem she did that quite well enough on her own—without anyone elses help.
Sgrena is a perfect representative of mainstream media, providing a striking example of how MSM’s ignorance and disregard for the truth is leading them—and others—into danger.
Update 3-11-05: An automatic translation from the original Dutch article, confirms that the English translation presented here is a reasonable translation from the original.
