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Crash
Obviously the deaths of dozens of soldiers in a helicopter crash is a tragedy. But if it's an accident, then it's just that -- a sad incident in a war that's seen many sad incidents. If it turns out to be a shoot-down, we may have more serious problems. The same article contains this unrelated tidbit I found intriguing: "In Sadr City, a heavily populated Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, American and Iraqi forces arrested 19 suspected insurgents in a raid Tuesday night outside the Rasoul Mosque, the military said." Does that mean we're back to fighting with Muqtada's men? Otherwise, one doesn't think of Sadr City as a typical hangout for Sunni/Baathist insurgent types (the use of the word "insurgent" to describe everyone we fight with irrespective of their affiliation is not helpful in trying to understand these things).
January 26, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
But if it's an accident, then it's just that -- a sad incident in a war that's seen many sad incidents. If it turns out to be a shoot-down, we may have more serious problems.
A military that is so severely over extended that it can't properly (re)train flight crews and maintain quipment is a very serious problem.
No matter how this shakes out, these deaths are no accident!!
Posted by: Keith G | Jan 26, 2005 12:32:02 PM
They were Sadr's people. Maybe Allawi is trying to fight Shi'ite religious influence before the election? Maybe there was some intelligence that they were going to disrupt the election somehow? Who knows...
Posted by: Brian Ulrich | Jan 26, 2005 12:35:10 PM
MY, when was the last time 31 people died in a military training accident in the USA? I can't think of any. 31 people dying at one time anywhere in the USA would be pretty big news even in big cities like NY city where people being killed are more accepted as routine.
Posted by: Dan the Man | Jan 26, 2005 12:50:53 PM
Well, remember that those Ukrainians who died in an explosion were initially listed as non-hostile casualties, but it now turns out that the explosion was due to an IED, and thus were hostile casualties.
Posted by: Glaivester | Jan 26, 2005 12:53:24 PM
For months, the bottom grafs of AP stories have reported increased police activities against the Mahdi Army. A cache of weapons discovered in Najaf, an attack on a police station in Basra, etc. Sadr has refrained from big attacks since October, but he's neither disarmed nor renounced violence as an option.
Posted by: Spencer | Jan 26, 2005 12:55:39 PM
Of the 33 helicopters downed in Iraq since May 2003, at least 20 were downed by enemy fire, therefore more than a 50/50 chance that this was enemy action.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 26, 2005 12:58:03 PM
Re Sadr, do you know that there are some Sadrists running in the Iraqi Election? They are on the same list as Ahmed Chalabi.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 26, 2005 1:01:04 PM
A military that is so severely over extended that it can't properly (re)train flight crews and maintain quipment is a very serious problem. No matter how this shakes out, these deaths are no accident!!
Also, being forced by the enemy to take off and fly in bad weather isn't purely an accident either.
Posted by: hf | Jan 26, 2005 1:02:50 PM
MY, when was the last time 31 people died in a military training accident in the USA?
I recall 11 or 12 soldiers being killed in a training accident (also a helicopter crash) at Fort Drum about a year and a half ago.
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 1:17:23 PM
Guys don't get too caught up in the possible accidental causes of this crash as being the military's fault. The sandstorms and any takeoff and landing operations cause an immense cloud of dust/sand to obsure vision. It's not being overextended or poorly trained, it's just that it's a real bitch to fly rotary wings over there. The fact that a dozen helos already crashed due to accidents in the past two years should be evidence of that.
Having said that, this is still a tragic story, and if it was an intentional shootdown, really demonstrates an increase in insurgent activity that bodes ill for our troops.
Posted by: J. | Jan 26, 2005 1:20:35 PM
I'll add that this is a tradgedy, and provides a sad counterpoint to the extremely optimistic feelings I've been having about the elections.
That being said, even if it resulted directly from enemy fire, it doesn't NECESSARILY mean an increase in insurgent activity, an increase in insurgent effectiveness, or anything else that we need worry a lot about. It could just be a very unlucky shot. I think we all will just have to wait and see the details.
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 1:38:19 PM
It could just be a very unlucky shot. I think we all will just have to wait and see the details.
Oh, shit--I agree with Al.
Posted by: bobo brooks | Jan 26, 2005 1:45:26 PM
In war, there's no clear line between accident and consequence of hostiliites. There have been lots of U.S. deaths in single vehicle accidents caused by people driving too fast or without lights because they were afraid of getting shot (e.g. journalist Michael Kelly). Whether or not this helicopter took a shot, these deaths are a consequence of the ongoing insurgency.
Posted by: old guy | Jan 26, 2005 2:15:51 PM
I agree with old guy. This many troops on a helo suggests this was a troop transport mission. If the roads were safe would they be flying them around in choppers?
Posted by: jimBOB | Jan 26, 2005 3:03:27 PM
Jimbob is right here. There are clearly accidents in Iraq that have nothing to do with enemy action. A rifle misfiring on a base, or something, that could and does happen on US bases here. But a transport helicopter forced to travel through a sandstorm resulting in a crash is not just an incidental and accidental tragedy. It is a direct result of the closure of more routine, and safe, options for transporting troops around the country. As such, it doesn't signify any increase in the potency of the insurgency, however. After all, the roads that lead to the west of Iraq have been deemed too dangerous for travel for a year now. Nothing new with the need to use helicopters. More telling is the decision to send so many troops to that area. Where were they going? To guard and close the border with Jordan? The accident was in the FAR west of the country.
Posted by: Elrod | Jan 26, 2005 3:25:33 PM
Details now say they were flying at night in a practice exercise for the upcoming elections. Not sure if flying at night is more dangerous than the sandstorm scenario or not. I've heard the NVGs give you no depth perception.
Posted by: J. | Jan 26, 2005 4:27:10 PM
This might be yet another casualty of the USMC's obsession with the tilt wing Osprey, as a replacement for the CH53.
The CH53s are *old*, and old airframes need more maintenance, and fail spontaneously.
Their replacement has been delayed by at least 10 years by the effort to get the stalled Osprey airworthy (they crash).
This could be the bureaucratic boondogle underlying this tragedy.
http://d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c445.htm
Ex-Green Beret Surprised by Business as Usual in
Versailles on the Potomac
April 23, 2002
Comment: #445
Discussion Thread - Comment #s - 354, 273, 237, 401, 405, 442
The five-year defense plan now before Congress will continue to pump billions into the $37 billion buy 437 V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for the Marines. This horror story began development at the height of the Cold War in 1982, although it is a flawed concept with a string of crashes reaching back to 1955 [see Comment #401]. The V-22 is a hybrid aircraft designed to take off and land like a helicopter while tilting its rotors forward to fly like an airplane. It went into low rate production in 1997, well before it was fully tested. Of particular concern is the V-22's susceptibility to a deadly aerodynamic phenomenon known as vortex ring state (VRS).
(remove 'at' to reply by email)
Posted by: lbsgrad | Jan 26, 2005 5:51:23 PM
Well, that's life in modern America. Everything is an 'accident', nobody is responsible for anything (unless you're poor or black, in which case everything is your fault). Say you're cruising down the freeway at 60 mph a car-length behind the next guy, and suddenly twenty or thirty of you have a pile-up- well, that's an 'accident', nothing anybody could have foreseen or prevented by doing something different.
So we report about 1300 deaths in Iraq, because the other 6700 deaths there were 'non-combat related'- as though the Army would be there if there weren't combat going on.
And when 10,000 of us die because we got the wrong medication or treatment in the hospital each year, why those are all 'accidents'.
But it's no accident that the members of the Bush gang have avoided the military and concentrated on making money in the war industries, and no accident that the poor can't afford college now if they don't serve in the military. That's the 'natural order of things', related to but subtly different from the 'accidents' that usually involve poor people.
In other words, Alibis-R-Us.
Posted by: serial catowner | Jan 26, 2005 6:47:48 PM
Serial Catowner:
Not trying gto nit pick your numbers "So we report about 1300 deaths in Iraq, because the other 6700 deaths..." but I am just interested where you got those numbers.
The CNN website, which I consider to usually be pretty reliable, reports "There have been 1,578 coalition troop deaths, 1,418 Americans, 76 Britons, seven Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 20 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 16 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 17 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of January 26, 2005." The CNN site is as follows:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/
Posted by: Benjamin | Jan 26, 2005 10:56:09 PM
"he's neither disarmed nor renounced violence as an option."
As long as the Americans have not disarmed or renounced violence as an option, why should Sadr or any other Iraqi? Let's not forget who violently and aggressively invaded whose country.
Posted by: Shirin | Jan 27, 2005 1:52:32 AM
SHIRIN -
You can run but you can't hide. Why haven't you answered me in the other posts? Are you a PUSSY? The American's haven't disarmed because there are idiot radical islamist TERRORISTs shooting at them. You're such an idiot.
DON't RUN, I WILL FIND YOU!!!!
Posted by: Bring'em Home | Jan 27, 2005 2:17:46 AM
It could just be a very unlucky shot. I think we all will just have to wait and see the details.
"Oh, shit--I agree with Al."
I agree too -- with the caveat that we may never see the details, or they may be falsified. This is a military operation, and managing the news is an integral part of the war effort. It may be 25 years before we start getting the real story (or at least the story the military recorded for its own records).
Posted by: J Thomas | Jan 27, 2005 10:20:52 AM
Just so I get clarification, if a transport traveling to Iraq went down and 130+ lives were lost, that wouldn't be an accident either, but some here's justifications, because the conflict itself is not justified/is immoral. Correct?
Just curious as to the positions expressed here.
Posted by: Adrock | Jan 27, 2005 11:32:26 AM
Why does it matter if the crash was an "accident" or "combat-related"? It seems that any soldier in enemy territory who dies, whether from disease, hostile fire, or an accident, has sacrificed his life just as patriotically and honorably as any other in the war zone. Remember, a majority of deaths in the US Civil War were from disease. In WWI disease killed a massive number of soldiers on both sides. In both cases the soldier would likely have survived had the war not happened. And in both cases the soldier gave his life for his country every bit as the men who died charging the enemy trenches. There is no comparison between a war-related accident and civilian accident - those who die in weather-related car pileups suffer a completely different kind of tragedy than those who died in western Iraq, even though both are "accidents".
Posted by: Elrod | Jan 27, 2005 12:58:29 PM
My stepson was on that helicopter. The U.S. should be ashamed that none of the 31 recieved a purple heart because it was not considered combat, JUST an accident. Shame on the leaders of those men who never submitted or rallied for those men.
Posted by: Suzanne | Oct 2, 2006 8:56:03 PM
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