Also tonight on The Laura Flanders Show, Christabel Nsiah-Buadi (associate producer of the show) gave a report on Giuliana Sgrena. Nsiah-Buadi reported that Sgrena has had her second surgery and is still weak and has trouble speaking. Flanders noted that we're not hearing about this in our domestic (U.S.) media. ("She's very weak. This was her second operation.") Nsiah-Buadi also noted that Sgrena was "very nervous."
They discussed how Sgrena was stating that car was fired on from behind. (Which is why the driver wasn't injured.) Nsiah Buadi noted this would mean that they were fired on while driving away.
It was also noted that despite the United States promise of "full cooperation" with the
Italians on this investigation, they are refusing to allow two Italian investigators to examine the car. ("They're barring two investigators from looking at the car.") The issue of cell phones was also brought up and they're not being turned over. (This was a new detail to me.)
On the issue of Italian troops withdrawing from Iraq, Nsaiah-Buadi noted that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was now saying it is "a hope" that Italian troops will be out of Iraq by September. (Berlusconi faces an election in April.)
For additional details on Giuliana Sgrena please refer to the interview Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales conducted with Naomi Klein on Democracy Now! Friday.
From that interview we'll note Klein's remarks on Giuliana Sgrena's health (because Flanders is correct, we're not getting the details on how badly Sgrena was injured):
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. At first I want to say that I know Giuliana really would have liked to have been on the show herself to talk to your listeners and viewers, but one of the things that surprised me when I met with Giuliana is that she was quite a bit sicker than I think we have been led to believe. Her injuries were described as fairly minor; she was shot in the shoulder. But when I met with her, she was clearly very, very ill, and that's why she's not on the show this morning. She was fired on by a gun at the top of a tank, which means that the artillery was very, very large. It was a four-inch bullet that entered her body and broke apart. And it didn't just injure her shoulder, it punctured her lung. And her lung continues to fill with fluid, and there continues to be complications stemming from that fairly serious injury. So that was one of the details.
