A captain in the Parachute Regiment, Nicola Ciardelli, and 2 officers in the Carabinieri, Franco Lattanzio and Carlo De Trizio, died in Nasiriyah in an attack by a high powered bomb. They died while carrying out their duty as Italians. This is not true of the one who sent them to Iraq with the motivation of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

Today there are discussions about the withdrawal of our soldiers, a withdrawal that has anyway already been defined and that will take place within an established time frame. What is not discussed is the political responsibility of the Berlusconi government that sent our soldiers into a war zone without a true, real, justifiable reason. Who other than the previous government has on their conscience the young people killed for a useless war, that Italy did not declare?
The carabinieri deserve all our respect. Their families must be given help in every way by the State. I hold myself responsible to ensure that this will happen.
The Centre Right however, deserves a whole hearted condemnation for having aligned our foreign policy with the interests of the United States in the Middle East and for having exposed Italian soldiers, and the whole of our country to the tensions and to possible retaliation.