The saga of Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena, held for a month by kidnappers in Iraq and then shot by U.S. soldiers as she made her escape, is just another bizarre chapter in the continuing story of how President Bush's invasion of Iraq has put America behind the international eight ball.

The wounding of Ms. Sgrena and the killing of her rescuer, Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, triggered massive mourning in Rome and intensified simmering anti-American sentiment in Italy, where public opposition to the invasion clashes with official government backing.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of Mr. Bush's staunchest supporters on the war, has asked the U.S. Embassy for an explanation of the affair, in which the car carrying Ms. Sgrena and Mr. Calipari to the Baghdad airport was fired upon as it drove - or sped - through a highway checkpoint.

The initial U.S. explanation was that the car was bearing down on the checkpoint at high speed and that the U.S. troops, fearful of another suicide car bombing and uninformed by the Italians of the car's mission, took customary defensive action when the driver of the car ignored commands to stop.

That may be true, and perhaps a failure of communication was at fault. But in the court of public opinion in Italy and much of Europe, the incident only rekindles hostility toward the Americans for starting a war that they have not yet been able to finish.

The string of unintended consequences, from the liberation that turned into an occupation to the splintering of international solidarity and the short shrift given to the principle of collective action, has generated enormous diplomatic and political second-guessing about U.S. policy in the last two years.