The cause du jour of the left is anti-American communist (that’s not a judgment call; she works for an anti-American, communist newspaper) Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who is now apparently going to claim that US troops fired on her speeding vehicle for no reason other than malicious bloodlust: Hostage recalls ‘hail of gunfire’.

Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena has described how she came under a “hail of gunfire” moments after being released from her Iraqi abductors in Baghdad.

“I was especially shocked because we thought that by then the danger was past,” she told Italy’s Rai radio. Ms Sgrena, who was wounded in the incident, has been sent to a military hospital in Rome for an operation. She denied US military accounts that the car was speeding past a checkpoint when it was fired upon.

US President George W Bush has pledged to fully investigate the shooting, in which a senior Italian security agent, Nicola Calipari, died.

Ms Sgrena was abducted on 4 February. It is unclear how she was released. Some Italian press reports say a ransom was paid.

Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies, has demanded to know why US troops fired on the car carrying Ms Sgrena to safety.

“There was suddenly this shooting, we were hit by a hail of gunfire, and I was speaking with Nicola, who was telling me about what had been happening in Italy in the meantime, when he leaned towards me, probably also to protect me,” Ms Sgrena told Rai radio.

“And then he collapsed and I realised that he was dead.”

She said the shooting continued “because the driver wasn’t even managing to explain that we were Italian. So, it was a really terrible thing.”

Asked if the car was going too fast when the US troops opened fire, she said: “We weren’t going particularly fast given that type of situation.”

The details of this situation have been described in so many different ways that it’s very difficult to get a clear picture of what happened—and mainstream media has predictably ignored Sgrena’s radical anti-war background. But the story has had a lot of wrong notes and strange coincidences from the very beginning; Rusty Shackleford suggests the entire kidnapping may have been staged. I’d need more evidence before I could agree with that, but in the shooting incident I’m much more inclined to take the word of US troops than an Italian anti-war journalist.

The inmates of Democratic Underground are beside themselves with glee, of course, accusing our soldiers of murder with no evidence. (But don’t forget, they support the troops!)