Les Jones

It's all fun and games to pretend corpses are old and rotten instead of fresh and strange, but what about the fact that the Italian journalist covering this story was kidnapped, threatened by her abductors to not publish her story, relieved of her evidence, then, after Italian agents rescued her, was shot at by the U.S. military deep within the secure perimeter around the Baghdad airport?

After Fallujah, there were reports of napalm use and unusual smells. Phosphorus is a common substance used to illuminate battlefields and to torch the crops of farmers whose fields are used as hiding places by insurgents. I'd entertain claims that phosphorus was used as an incendiary substance on areas thought to be void of human presence, but which actually had hidden fighters in them. To claim this is all fiction, however, stretches credulity.

Why was an Italian agent trying to rescue an Italian journalist killed by U.S. forces? Why was he killed at a temporary, makeshift roadblack set up on a highway onramp well within the safe zone around the Baghdad airport? Why is it that very journalist who is now reporting that phosphorus was used on human targets in our largest offensive since the invasion of Iraq? Why has Donald Rumsfeld twice offered to resign?

I don't much trust Italian journalists after that one episode with the woman who worked for the Italian communist paper.

So how exactly do you explain the fact that the so-called phosphorous victims' clothing wasn't burned?

I don't have an explanation for the intact clothing. I haven't seen the video, nor do I have enough knowledge to judge what killed someone. I don't think use of phosphorus is that big of a deal, nor particularly surprising. I do, however, think the details of the Italian journalist's kidnapping and rescue that have emerged are cause for serious concern.

She claims her captors wanted to silence her and confiscate the materials she had on the Fallujah assault, and the location and circumstances of the shooting that killed one of her rescuers are very suspicious. She had already passed several checkpoints and was well within a secure zone.

It looks a lot like an attempt to silence her, and if all she had was evidence of dubious use of napalm and phosphorus, the old cliche that the cover-up is worse than the crime applies.