At least 17 more today... how long until 500 or 1,000? We're already beyond what we lost in Vietnam the first 2 years. _________________ 17 Soldiers Die as Two U.S. Helicopters Crash By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, November 15, 2003; 7:00 PM BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 -- Two U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters collided in midair Saturday and crashed into a residential neighborhood in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 17 soldiers and injuring five, the U.S. military said. Military officials said one other soldier was unaccounted for. All those on board were members of the 101st Airborne Division, based in Fort Campbell, Ky. The officials said the aircraft collided when one, attempting to dodge ground fire, climbed swiftly and hit the other. Several witnesses contacted in Mosul also said the helicopters had collided, but one witness said at least one of the Black Hawks was hit by ground fire. Reuters news agency quoted a U.S. officer at the scene as saying that a rocket propelled grenade hit one of the Black Hawks. The crashes took place at about 6:15 p.m., when darkness already had fallen. A U.S. military statement said that one helicopter was carrying members of a quick reaction force and the other was transporting soldiers on a mission to northern Iraq. "The cause of the incidents are under investigation," the statement said. "We will not speculate on the cause of these crashes." U.S. troops and Iraqi police sealed off the crash scene in Mosul, 215 miles north of the capital, which was reportedly near a major bridge crossing the Tigris River. U.S. military spokesmen did not confirm news reports of nine injuries on the Black Hawks, utility craft that are capable of carrying 11 soldiers in addition to crew. Helicopters are in wide use in Iraq both for transport and to carry out raids on suspected guerrilla hideouts. Attack helicopters have come into frequent use recently during stepped up assaults on resistance forces in Baghdad and elsewhere in central Iraq. Three other U.S. helicopters have been shot down in the past three weeks. On Nov. 2, guerrillas in central Iraq fired a surface-to-air missile and shot down a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, killing 16 U.S. troops; on Nov. 7, a rocket propelled grenade blasted a Black Hawk, killing six; and on Oct. 25, an RPG hit another Black Hawk, but there were no fatalities. Mounting casualties in Iraq have prompted the Bush administration to speed up plans to turn over authority to Iraqi leaders and technically end the occupation by next summer. However, there are no proposals for U.S. troops to abandon Iraq, even when an Iraqi government is in place. Anti-U.S. violence has been on the rise in Mosul, a city that had been relatively peaceful in the five months since major combat ended. It is Iraq's third largest city and contains the second largest population of Sunni Muslim Arabs, who have been a major source of resistance to the U.S. occupation. At least four U.S. troops have died either in ambushes or when their vehicles hit roadside bombs this month in Mosul. Pro-occupation Iraqi civilians have also been targeted for assassination. On Saturday, gunmen shot and killed two people, a translator for the city government and his son. By mid-evening in Mosul, there were no reports of casualties among Iraqi civilians where the U.S. helicopters went down. Ambulances and municipal fire trucks rushed to the scene, witnesses said. "The Americans have closed off everything near the crash," said Bashar Darwish, a hotel employee in Mosul. Darwish said he saw one low flying helicopter in flames before hitting the other. He said there had been exchanges of fire between the choppers and someone on the ground, and that one Black Hawk was hit and burst in flames. He said the crash took place in the Sheikh Fethi district on the city's west side. Another witness, Mohammed Badran, said one of the helicopters ascended abruptly and hit the second aircraft. Yezen Juburi, a businessman in Mosul, said that the helicopters simply collided. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division, the unit that occupies Mosul and to whom the Black Hawks were attached, declined to provide details. A military official in Baghdad said that one of the Black Hawks was trying to avoid ground fire. Elsewhere in Iraq, a U.S. soldier was killed on Saturday in Baghdad, the victim of a roadside bomb that struck one of two vehicles on patrol. Guerrillas are using a variety of bombs and detonators in the makeshift weapons: explosives, artillery shells and mortar shells as well as mines. The devices are sometimes set off when vehicles roll over them; sometimes they are detonated by remote control. The 19th Italian victim of a car bombing last week in the southern city of Nasariya died Saturday in a Kuwait hospital. He was declared brain dead and his family gave medical personnel permission to take him off life support systems. Car bombs have struck embassies, United Nations headquarters, offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, police stations, and hotels. The Nasariya attack was one of two that have hit the relatively pacified southern part of the country. In late summer, a blast in the Shiite Muslim town of Najaf killed a religious leader and dozens of civilians. Meanwhile, a kidnapped Portuguese journalist was freed unharmed Saturday in the vicinity of Basra, 36 hours after he had been abducted. The journalist, Carlos Raleiras, told a Lisbon radio station that he was seized by nine gunmen and was moved in the trunk of a car and to several different houses during his ordeal. In support of U.S. efforts in Iraq, Portugal sent 128 police officers to the country on Wednesday.
Actually it's three rim. Don't know if you saw this in the Vietnam vs. Iraq thread. ---------- PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation. A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000. By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier in Baghdad on Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where U.S. forces number about 130,000 troops -- the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...sa_vietnam_dc_4
Bush won't even visit the families of the dead soldiers. If it didn't hurt him politically, he wouldn't care if a thousand more Americans come home in body bags. Which, sadly, will probably happen.
I don't want us to lose people... I don't want us to leave another country in ruins.... DAMN YOU TO HELL PRESIDENT BUSH!
So we have the same number of deaths while having 10 times the number of people. Hmm, seems like the death rate is closer to 1/10 of Vietnam instead of even.
Now you can do drugs and *stay* in the army. They are really desperate for headcount. http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw...,0,4666249.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines Soldiers Sent Abroad Despite Failed Test By Associated Press November 15, 2003, 3:05 PM EST DES MOINES, Iowa -- Twenty-one Iowa National Guard troops who tested positive for drug use on the eve of their deployment were sent overseas anyway, despite the Army's "zero tolerance" policy. Now the Army must decide how to deal with them when they return. Officials at Fort McCoy, Wis., which serves as a multistate jumping-off point for Reserve and Guard troops, said about 13 soldiers from other states who tested positive for drugs were also sent to Iraq. Fort McCoy officials said some of the soldiers apparently used the drugs with the intention of getting caught and sent home. "On a certain level, it would be perverse to throw people out because of their misconduct, when other people who did not engage in that misconduct are having to put their lives on the line," said Eugene Fidell, a military law expert with the National Institute of Military Justice. Others who tested positive were deemed by medical officials to be infrequent users who posed no risk to themselves or their fellow soldiers in the field. "A positive on their drug test is not going to keep them here, unless there's a dependency issue," said Linda Fournier, a Fort McCoy spokeswoman. "These units have to have so many people to go overseas." Spokesmen for the Army and the Department of Defense told The Des Moines Register this week that they were unaware of the problem. The prospect of punishing troops who return after months of military service has attorneys at Army bases pacing the hallways. Under current policy, soldiers with three or more years of service often are discharged for positive drug tests. Younger soldiers sometimes opt for rehabilitation at the discretion of their commanders. "The official policy is, you don't have a whole lot of latitude," said Mark O'Hara, a 31-year Coast Guard veteran and spokesman for the Judge Advocates Association in Washington, D.C. "Maybe it's going to be tough if the guy comes back a hero," O'Hara said. Seven of the 21 Iowa soldiers were from Fort McCoy, which also serves as a jumping-off point for troops from New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Idaho and other states. In all, the base sent about 20 soldiers to Iraq who tested positive in pre-deployment drug tests.
Dude, this forum is about bashing Bush. Pointing out things like this doesn't help the cause. Shape up.
Did Kennedy or LBJ visit the families of dead servicemen from the war in VietNam. I was a kid, but I don't remember any such publicity... all the way through Nixon.
Not really. Strategically speaking, a greater concentration usually means greater zone and degree of control, thereby limiting the areas the enemy has to access you from. As such, ther attacks begin to be more contained, and when more contained, more easily dealt with/predicted. Even in a guerilla war, at any given time the point is to have the greatest amount of firepower at the point of conflict...how guerilla warfare is different is in the means by which that is accomplished, the regularity, the setting, and the post engagement actions of the combative forces. But if we had 10 times our number, and the enemy number remained what it is, we should have a much, much lower casualty/troop rate. That said, we're in a no-win situation here, militarily. The principle of our armed forces is essentially the same as it was for the Blitz in WWII, use mechanized speed and air superiority to pin down and spread out the enemy forces, and bring overwhelming force to bear at the point of impact. The problem is that once we become the occupying force, we reverse that position on ourselves, having to spread our forces out so thin, and giving the enemy the initiative and ability to coordinate when and where they strike us. The best we can hope is that we will win enough popular support that the people will help us identify planned attacks at the operational level, and in so doing make the water too hot for the enemy to endure long term. I don't see that happening...the little victories we're announcing on tv...weapons dumos discovered, a few dead guerillas here and there are really short term, empty wins. There are always more weapons and fighters available when you sit smack dab in the middle of several countries whose people hate and fear you, and want you out.
How is the president of the US going to attend 400 funerals? in a 6 month period? That would be 2+ per day spread around the nation.
When was the last time a liberal grieved over the death of American soldiers in Iraq? Instead of high-fiving after choppers are downed and sprinting to your computers to broadcast your 'good news', perhaps you could spend a little time thinking about whose friends and families were involved in the tragic events. Perhaps you could offer a mere sentence in which you consoled the dead, instead of celebrating terrorist victories. MacBeth, your argument is not even coherent. It is completely tangential to the statement that StupidMoniker put forth. It is not persuasive in the least.
Edit: That should read 'consoled the families and friends of the dead'. In my understanding of human existence, it is difficult to express sympathies to dead bodies.
Try reading again, this time with your " Think" button switched on... ...it was a direct rebuttle of the assumption that the ratio should be translatable, and yes, I moved on from there to make another point, something I would have hoped you would be flexible enough to grasp.
And, T_J, if that first part of your post was even remotely addressed towards me, I challenge you to find one single example of my celebrating the deaths of anyone...ever.. Why, T_J, I'd even mourn for you. Seriously, though, if it was directed at me, it's classless, baseless, thoughtless, and clueless. I suspect the same no matter who it's addressed towards, but can only speak with certainty about whayt my commnets have, and more important have not been regarding the deaths of anyone.
God (or Clutch, in this case), is it even remotely possible to be able to ignore people when their ignorant posts are quoted? I've been enjoying the last week of this BBS more than any since I've utilized this function, only to read this. If T_J's post is not the most ignorant and offensive I've ever seen on this BBS (and yes, I've seen many of my own posts), then I'm not sure I've ever read ignorant or offensive posts. I hope the moderators take the appropriate action against any poster who would even consider posting that people celebrate the deaths of their fellow Americans just because of their political views. I'm disgusted at what I've read tonight and downright thankful to Whoever is up there that I don't have the horrible black mind that Trader_Jorge has. And before you tell me to heed my own advice and read the sticky, insinuating that me or any other liberal would celebrate the deaths of American soldiers throws all the rules out the window. You're a certifiable ass.
I'm a proud bleeding-heart liberal, and I've spent many a night crying for the 400 dead Americans and what they died for. "High-fiving" over the "good news" of 17 dead Americans? It curdles my blood that you would even imagine that. You're so blinded by your hatred that you refuse to see beyond your prejudices and obstinancy. Love and compassion are infinitely more important than arbitrarily applied political labels. There's much more to a person than their political identity. Your inability to see that is truly sad. I hope you find love and happiness, because it appears that you have neither. Good luck, man. I'll be pulling for you.
