There seems little doubt that Giuliana Sgrena was cynically using Nicola Calipari, and he was equally cynically using her, in what might best be described as a makeshift marriage of convenience, where each apparently remembered the old adage, "My enemy's enemy is my friend." Giuliana was in Iraq essentially on behalf of the more than ninety-percent of Italian citizens who want their 3,000 troops removed from Iraq for humanitarian reasons, and Nicola was in Iraq on behalf of powerful "Old European" and other bureaucrats who also want those 3,000 troops sent home, though for slightly different reasons. Since both groups desired the same end result, it is not surprising that the micro Calipari-Sgrena coalition was formed.
Most European intelligence agencies have powerful factions that want their own sovereign troops removed from Iraq immediately, and Italy is no different fom any other. Thus before his death, Nicola Calipari, Deputy Director of anti-Mafia operations for Italian external intelligence, headed one of the most powerful factions of all. To him fell the direct task of getting 3,000 Italian soldiers home alive to their families, against the express orders of his 'democratically elected' Prime Minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi.
By deliberately inserting Giuliana Sgrena into the Republican Guard, Calipari was doing the only thing dynamic enough to drive Italians out onto the streets again to demand the return of their troops. Nicola Calipari knew very well that the Italian Intelligence Service could never go public and demand the return of the soldiers, because ordinary Italians would immediately smell a trap, though in reality there was none.
Giuliana Sgrena was an entirely different matter. She was well known, respected, and had unquestioned credibility - especially after she returned home with accurate and terrifying details of American war crimes against the women and children of sovereign Iraq.
There were the awesome cluster bombs that had laid waste entire villages; giant AC130 gunships which rained death through the open windows of civilian houses, and lauging soldiers who burst into private homes to strip-search or machine gun the occupants. All of this and more in the sacred name of 'democracy' - New York style.
Once more, driven on by the vivid images painted by Giuliana Sgrena, furious Italians would stalk the streets of Rome, demanding that 'New York Toady' Silvio Berlusconi bring the soldiers home from Iraq, and this time around, Berlusconi might be forced to comply. Nicola Calipari had made an inspired choice, but word had leaked out to both Bush and Berlusconi. The two elderly war criminals decided that the only way out of the mess, would be to kill both Sgrena and Calipari before they could actually leave Iraq.
George W. Bush did not actually sigh a "kill order" of course, but got on the hot line to Langley, Virginia, where there are plenty of two-bit murderers who know exactly what to do, and how to do it. In fact, the answer turned out to be quite easy.
Nicola Calipari would be able to transport Giuliana Sgrena alone from a Republican Guard safe house just west of the "Green Zone" in Baghdad, but would then be vulnerable as he transited the American-controlled Baghdad airport on the way to a waiting Italian helicopter. There lay the critical window of opportunity, and the CIA rapidly assembled a kill team.