| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| U.S. Helicopter Goes Down Near Tikrit |
| 2003-10-25 |
| TIKRIT, Iraq - A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter was shot down Saturday by ground fire near Tikrit, a center of Iraq (news - web sites)’s anti-U.S. insurgency, U.S. officials said. The U.S. command in Baghdad said five soldiers were injured. Two helicopters were flying when the second one in the formation was hit by a projectile, believed to be a rocket propelled grenade, witnesses said. An AP reporter at a U.S. base several hundred yards away saw the striken aircraft spin out of control in the air then fall to the ground. The downed craft could later be seen, engulfed in flames and lying amid brush in a field as a plume of thick black smoke rose into the sky. The second copter hovered overhead. It was the second time a U.S. helicopter has been downed by hostile fire since President Bush (news - web sites) declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1. The last copter to be shot down was in June. "A helicopter did go down," Capt. Jefferson Wolfe, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, said. "We can confirm it. It was a Black Hawk. We are investigating." n Baghdad, the U.S. military command said the five people on board were injured but were "safely evacuated." The command did not say why the helicopter went down but added that after it crashed it received ground fire. An injured person was seen being removed from the site on a stretcher. Black Hawks ordinarily have a crew of three and can carry an additional 11 passengers. The downing came at a time when U.S. officials have been warning that thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles remain unaccounted for after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)’s regime and pose a threat to U.S. military aircraft. RPGs, also fired with a shoulder device, are a weapon frequently used by insurgents for ambushes on American forces. Tikrit, the hometown of ousted leader Saddam Hussein, lies in the heart of the "Sunni Triangle," the region of central Iraq north of Baghdad that has seen mutliple attacks every day against U.S. forces. The region is where Saddam drew his strongest support, and his loyalists are now believed to be leading resistance to the U.S.-led occupation. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, on a three-day tour of Iraq, was in Tikrit earlier Saturday visiting the main U.S. garrison there. He left the city hours before the helicopter was shot down and was in the northern city of Kirkuk, U.S. officials said. . . . Time to take off the farking gloves and treat Tikrit (and its people) as HOSTILE. |
| Posted by:CrazyFool |
| #9 snellenr - sorry, I've been distracted watching the Northern Ice Cave Jooos play the Southern Sun People Jooos in the the Series... No sweat and no offense taken - it made me think about what I type, too... and it was damned good! I'm not sure I'm cut out for this thinking real hard about being relevant - or not. That's not the way I work. |
| Posted by: .com 2003-10-25 10:07:22 PM |
| #8 .com -- wasn't meant as a slur in your direction (I'm not that subtle), and sorry you took it that way. Was actually thinking of myself much more, and will be trying to moderate my suggestions of de-D/T'd B-83s and hovering blimps in the future. |
| Posted by: snellenr 2003-10-25 9:11:43 PM |
| #7 snellenr - Excellent implied slur. |
| Posted by: .com 2003-10-25 5:55:26 PM |
| #6 .com, we're doing our best -- but also trying to include some content in our rants in keeping with Fred's wishes to stay pertinent :-) |
| Posted by: snellenr 2003-10-25 5:38:41 PM |
| #5 So where are the outraged posts? Last time I posted a comment like Steve's I had 20 pfools come out of the woodwork wanting to nail me up. I agree it's obvious that the Sunni Triangle should be crushed - it's all they seem to understand. All that treating them with any level of civility gets you is tribal merc BS ("Yes, we will guard the pipeline: $1000/km/month") or ambushes and sheltering of foreign asshats. Sheesh. Hmmmm. Prolly part of that Conspiracy of Steves thing, huh? |
| Posted by: .com 2003-10-25 5:35:18 PM |
| #4 I started out scoffing at this notion, but according to globalsecurity.org the population of Tikrit is only 28,000 -- might actually be practical. Might be useful to couch it as a challenge... if Saddam doesn't show up at a Coalition base by such-and-such a day, Tikrit will be destroyed. Fallujah is a tougher problem -- a quarter million folk is a lot of refugees to take responsibility for (and we'd have to, eventually). |
| Posted by: snellenr 2003-10-25 5:32:08 PM |
| #3 What do 100 D-9s or D-10s with push blades running side by side look like? FUN dorf |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-10-25 5:02:12 PM |
| #2 I was saying this before the war, and I'll say it again. There are times when you have to make a example of a place. It may be too late now, but Tikrit, as the home of Sammy's tribe, should have been leveled. I don't think very many other Iraqis would have complained. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-10-25 1:26:30 PM |
| #1 I repeat my solution to this problem. March everyone of these yahoos out into the desert and leave them there to fend for themselves. Why should we provide food/water/shelter for them? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2003-10-25 1:18:23 PM |