Holy ****! (Iraq) Helo shot down, up to 35 aboard, 20+ casualties

[Dis]

They said the wounded were wounded

I find the news never confirms how wounded the wounded are.

I shudder to think how many people lost limbs- and genitals during and after this war.

[Pekka]

Nah, not talking about details.. about are there critically wounded and how many.

[Space05us]

it would suck being over there right now, the soldiers aren't being killed in combat, they're being murdered.

[DanielXY]

Murdered? They are soldiers who invaded a foreign country. They face resistance? How surprising...

Unless you argue every kill equals murder, your wording is wrong.

[Dis]

I think what he means is the U.S. soldiers have no opportunity to fight back.

They are sitting ducks essentually.

Reuters confirms 13 deaths.

[uh Clem]

They were going on R&R.

I didn't know Chinooks were still being used. How old was the chopper? (Not that that was a factor.)

[Chemical Ollie]

Aftonbladet.se says the Helicopter was hit from 500 meters by an unknown weapon. Must be some kind of AA missile to be accurate at that range.

[JohnT]

My sympathies to the soldiers and their families.

[Kropotkin]

Very bad start to november. Things have to calm down a lot for this not to be the worst month after the war for the US military.

[Alexander's Horse]

One small mercy - helos can usually get to the ground. The Chinnook is a tough aircraft.

Its going to be hard for us to keep our mission open there if this keeps up.

[Sandman]

Helicopters are deathtraps. Don't rely too heavily on them.

Oh, and I bet the weapon used was an RPG. It always is.

[Odin]

This is sad, they where going to do some R&R too. The Bush-lovers tell me to support our troops, well why don't they ask thier idol why he is cutting our boys' pay!

[DaShi]

Because funeral services are expensive.

[uh Clem]

Rummy's comment from one of the talking head programs this morning: "What it was, was a bad day for those young people."

!

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Dissident
I think what he means is the U.S. soldiers have no opportunity to fight back.

Well, that's modern warfare for you. The Iraqis certainly didn't get much of a chance to fight back during the initial invasion, either.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Space05us
First they welcome us then they celebrate when we are killed, as far as Im concerned they can go **** themselves.

They told us themselves that's what would happen back in April. "Thanks for getting rid of Saddam, now go."

Anyway, 15 dead from the downed Sikorsky, 1 dead in a patrol nearby.

All the President has to say is that this just shows the enemy is getting desperate. Well, guess what, the Prez has been saying that for months now. Why hasn't the enemy gotten desperate yet? Maybe the Prez should stop talking out his ass. Maybe Rummy should admit the truth about what he meant by "long, hard slog." Maybe Bush and Cheney need to resign.

[Pekka]

desperate? How someone could come to this conclusion? It shows, that they are getting their act together. It shows, that they are already following a routine and certain changing patterns and are getting comfortable in it and it allows them to try these kind of bigger strikes.

Anyway, bad day for sure. Especially to those young men, because they will not see tomorrow.

[BKWM]

They now say that there are fifteen dead , and 21 wounded.

[chequita guevara]

Bush's desperate spin
With each passing day, the administration's claims that the Iraq attacks are signs of "desperation" sound increasingly, well ...

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert

Oct. 29, 2003 | For months the White House has answered virtually every terrorist attack inside Iraq with the same talking point: The enemy is "desperate." The killing and chaos were the surest signs that America was making headway rebuilding a free and peaceful Iraq because, the administration insists, it's progress that threatens freedom-hating terrorists.

Desperate? How about sophisticated? Or brazen, coordinated or cocky? The terrorists are roaming freely inside Iraq, picking off their targets seemingly at will: hotels, police stations, embassies, mosques, even Baghdad's deputy mayor. Undaunted, administration officials are sticking with the spin they committed to months ago. A highlight reel:

"We cannot afford to allow Iraq to revert to the remnants of the Baathist regime that now ranges throughout Iraq in their desperate bid for influence and power."

-- Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, May 22, New York Times


"I think they're desperate. I think they're becoming less and less organized. This is not guerrilla warfare. It is not close to guerrilla warfare, because it's not coordinated, it's not organized and it's not led."

-- Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, Commander U.S. Army 4th Infantry, quoted June 19, Agence Press France


"[U.S. chief administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer] also said that though he wished that Saddam Hussein were in custody or dead, 'every evidence' suggested that he was not in charge of the well-orchestrated resistance and that the Iraqis attacking allied forces 'are a small group of desperate men -- they do not pose a strategic threat to the Iraqi people or to the coalition.'"

-- New York Times, July 6


"I think as we make political progress here we'll see more violence, more desperation for a time, and it's the nature of the enemy that we're fighting. So we shouldn't underestimate how hard they might fight."

-- U.S. military commander for Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, July 21


"And as we have more successes across the board, we should be prepared for more desperate attacks against our forces and the Iraqi people. But we will not be deterred."

-- White House spokesman Scott McClellan at press briefing


"'We see this more as a desperation move,' Gen. Odierno said. 'And I think in a way, it's backfiring, because we've found when they do this, it's causing more Iraqis to come in and give us information.'"

-- Sunday Mirror, July 27


"I think that what you're seeing is that the more progress we make, the more desperate these terrorists become. The terrorist attack yesterday in Baghdad only reinforced the importance of what we are doing."

-- McClellan, Aug. 20 briefing


"President Bush was defiant today. He said: 'Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime. The civilized world will not be intimidated, and these killers will not determine the future of Iraq.'"

-- New York Times, Aug. 20


"The more progress we make in Iraq, the more desperate the terrorists will become. Freedom is a threat to their way of life."

-- Bush, New York Times, Aug. 27


"Our military leaders have said that some of these attacks have become more sophisticated, but what you're really seeing is that the more progress we make, the more desperate these killers become."

-- McClellan, Aug. 27 briefing.


"I'm not trying to put a gloss on a bad day, but this was a desperate reaction to the real signs of progress."

-- Anonymous senior Bush advisor, Time magazine, Sept. 1


"And that is why, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos."

-- Bush's nationally televised speech, Sept. 7


"First, that Iraq is still a dangerous place. They also show, I think, the desperation -- the desperation of the adversaries that we face. We're actively engaged in rooting out this threat with more and more Iraqis coming forward with information and a willingness to help us."

-- Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifying before Congress, Sept. 9


"Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there and they must and will be defeated. The building of a new Iraq also provides opportunity for a different kind of Middle East."

-- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Oct. 8 speech at Chicago Council of Foreign Relations


"We're fighting on many fronts and now Iraq is the central front. Saddam holdouts and foreign terrorists are trying desperately to undermine Iraq's progress and to throw that country into chaos."

-- Bush, speaking at Air National Guard base, Oct. 9


"It's the central front in the war on terrorism, and foreign terrorists and remnants of the former regime are desperate because they know we are making significant progress. We are achieving successes."

-- McClellan, Oct. 10 briefing


"A visibly disturbed Wolfowitz, who was whisked from the hotel, denounced the attack as 'the desperate acts of a dying regime of criminals' but could not guarantee that the Rashid Hotel could be fully protected against them."

-- Oct. 26, Agence Press France


"Even with the number and sophistication of the daily attacks accelerating, Mr. Bush's response to questions about how the United States should respond has become almost automatic: The United States is slowly winning hearts and minds, and making Saddam Hussein's loyalists 'more desperate' each day."

-- Oct. 27, New York Times


"I think the reason they are doing this is because they want to get as much attention as they can and they are becoming more and more desperate each day."

-- Maj. Gen. Odierno, Fox News Channel, Oct. 27


"Their desperate attacks on innocent civilians will not intimidate us or the brave Iraqis and Afghans who are joining in their own defense and who are moving toward self-government."

-- Bush's Oct. 28 press conference


"I believe there will be a time when they become more and more desperate, that the regime loyalists will look to go to foreign fighters and try to integrate with them, but we have not seen that so far."

-- Maj. Gen. Odierno, Oct. 28, Agence Press France

[HershOstropoler]

And Rumsie: portable surface-to-air missiles "are widely available and do have the ability to shoot down a helicopter, and from time to time, this happens."

Sounds like he has a brilliant plan.

[NeOmega]

I remember hearing about an ambush in vietnam where 26 of 28 platoon memebers were wiped out, and I thought, man that's alot of casualties for one day!

Then I did the math, and realized Vietnam averaged about 20 deaths a day.

It started real slow, first a trickle of casualties.......

I have not missed the trend. In the past 2 weeks, days of casualties have been coming in 3's and 4's, not 1's and 2's anymore.

average daily attacks have doubled, from around 20 to around 40.

definitely gonna get worse before it gets better. And the more America tries to crack down, the more intense the resistance will become.

[Pekka]

Maybe it gets worse, and guerilla warfare definitely starts slowly. They need to test the limits and see what kind of area they can operate on safely, and what kind of risks they can take. This takes time.... but I've no doubt in my mind that it will be like Vietnam. They are not that strong. Not desperate, but not too strong either.

[Pekka]

I mean, that it's not won't get like that.

[BKWM]

If we don't let them back in areas where we have gotten rid of them, then it won't be as long as Vietnam was.

[BKWM]

They fired twice, according to BBC.

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by Pekka
Maybe it gets worse, and guerilla warfare definitely starts slowly. They need to test the limits and see what kind of area they can operate on safely, and what kind of risks they can take. This takes time.... but I've no doubt in my mind that it will be like Vietnam. They are not that strong. Not desperate, but not too strong either.

Vietnam was driven by an ideology and fear, an atheist ideology.

Iraq is being driven by a religious ideology. Vietnam had sappers, Iraq has suicide car bombers.

Winning a war requires one thing and one thing only, destroying your enemy's will to fight.

When people are commiting suicide to win.... you are SoL. You cannot destroy, on their home turf, a religio/suicidal faction's will to fight.

Plus, if you have ever been roughed up by the police for nothing, you'll know how bad it feels. I haven't ever had a family memeber killed or jailed by a Chinese speaking occupying trooper, but I bet it isn't cool when that sort of thing happens to an Iraqi. We cannot hope to stay, crack down, and win the hearts and minds. We can crack down, and build a totalitarian regime of our own, or we can walk away and let the civil war that will follow decide who rules Iraq.

Basically, like Vietnam, we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

Which, is why, I protested.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Pekka
Maybe it gets worse, and guerilla warfare definitely starts slowly. They need to test the limits and see what kind of area they can operate on safely, and what kind of risks they can take. This takes time.... but I've no doubt in my mind that it will be like Vietnam. They are not that strong. Not desperate, but not too strong either.

The parralells to Vietnam are easy to say, but the situation is totally different. In Vietnam you were facing a much larger resistence that was augmented by a national army applying pressure in the north. This was coupled with large support of arms and training by USSR. That is not the case in Iraq.

Polls show that the vast majority of the Iraqi people support the American presence. Many of the insurgents are foriegn nationals and not indeginous population. Strong political control is being excersized by the US. The troops enjoy strong support from the American people. There are no areas that attacks are coming from that the troops are being barred from.

Any invasion of a country will meet resistence. That does not make it a parralell to Vietnam.

[Lefty Scaevola]

T though the C47 is a bit bulky and too much of a target to be fyling in contested areas, should they be using Blackhawks there?

[chequita guevara]

Blackhawks don't make good transports.

[MOBIUS]

Ah great...

Seems like Bush et al. have another 20 or so US deaths on their hands after this latest, worst, strike against US personnel in the entire war...

As well as the 15 in the helo (we can count this as a minor miracle that less than half on board have died so far!), another soldier died in a nearby patrol and unconfirmed reports say up to four troops were killed in an attack on a convoy in Falluja.

"The Americans are pigs. We will hold a celebration because this helicopter went down - a big celebration," an Iraqi farmer near the crash site told Reuters news agency.

Worst of all is that I doubt most of these more recent attacks are even by Saddam's supporters - I doubt if Saddam were captured or killed tomorrow that you would even see an appreciable slackening in the attacks...

No, IMO you are seeing a ramping up of Al-Qaeda attacks (in a country where they used not to operate, so it will take their cells time to reach optimal operational ability) as they easily move through, shall we say, countries sympathetic to their cause.

The difference between Afghanistan and Iraq is that Afghanistan was on the periphery of the Islamic world whereas Iraq is slap-bang in the middle of nations hostile to the US such as Syria and Iran (both nations the US has been bullying lately), Saudi (lets be honest, they hate the US' guts...) etc.

Hell it's even getting cold in Chechnya and Afghanistan, maybe the fundies there fancy a 'Club Mid' holiday, catch some sun, kill a few infidels and maybe even get a martyrdom...?

Perhaps the scariest repurcussion is that this attack occured on the first day of a new R&R scheme to increase the troops' morale - many of whom have been in Iraq for more than a year...

I guess another unseen casualty will be this programme, or at least a curtailment of helo transport - as well as a plummeting of already rock bottom US morale...

I also doubt there'll be any more 'flying visits' by Rummy...

Hey MtG, is this a cluster****?