U.S. Transport Plane Lands Safely After Missile Hits

Minuteman

“Dongola”
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (Dec. 10) - Guerrillas hit a U.S. Air Force transport plane with a surface-to-air missile, causing the engine to explode, a senior Pentagon source said Wednesday. The plane landed safely.

The C-17 had just lifted off from Baghdad International Airport before dawn Tuesday when the engine exploded, slightly injuring one of the 16 passengers and crew, said U.S. Air Force Capt. Carrie Clear of 447th Air Expeditionary Group, based at the airport.

The plane returned to the airport and landed safely, Clear said.

A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the explosion as a direct hit by a ground-fired missile, "like the DHL" incident that damaged a cargo plane departing the airport last month. That plane, too, landed safely.

Clear said the incident was under investigation.

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We need to get some video games to those guys over there ... let'em act out their agression on sprites instead.
 
Gooooooood Morning Vietnam!!!!!!

Sound familiar? We're embroiled in good old-fashioned guerilla warfare, just like the good ol' days in 'Nam, man. I think I'm gonna start calling Dubya "LBJ 2". What a nearsighted, history-ignorant dumbass.
 
I'm consistently amazed that people refer to a man who has degrees from Harvard and Yale, ran his own successful business, and was governor of a state that, if it were an independent country, would have one of the ten largest economies on earth, as a "dumbass", "idiot", "moron", and so forth.

Before you start in on it, don't trot out the "his daddy got him in" line ... I don't care who you are, you have to be intelligent to get degrees from two Ivy League schools, even if you're the child of God Himself.

Nor can his sometimes colorful word-mangling ("nucular", "strategery", etc.) be used to condemn him as stupid. Albert Einstein is regarded, rightfully so, as one of the most brilliant scientific minds of our time. However, if you met the guy on the street, you'd think he was a card-carrying imbecile. He couldn't assemble a complete sentence before age nine, and was widely regarded as an imbecile his entire life. But somewhere in there he figured out relativity. Go figure.

Maybe you disagree with George W. Bush's policies. Fine. Maybe you don't like his politics. Fine. However, you can't responsibly imply the man has diminished mental capacity, when every shred of evidence says exactly the opposite.

Comparing Iraq to Vietnam is just enormously irresponsible. Vietnam took over twelve years and killed over 50,000 American soldiers. We have yet to hit the twelve month mark in Iraq, and the number of casualties is substantially smaller. Get back to me in ten years and we'll talk Vietnam.

FL270
 
Don't worry, you can expect four more years of Bush. The Deomocratic party is too busy fighting between the Clintion-Liberman faction and the Gore-Dean faction to pose a real threat in the 2004 elections.
 
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Gooooooood Morning Vietnam!!!!!!

Sound familiar? We're embroiled in good old-fashioned guerilla warfare, just like the good ol' days in 'Nam, man. I think I'm gonna start calling Dubya "LBJ 2". What a nearsighted, history-ignorant dumbass.

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well while were in the name calling mood lets take a look at your front runner Howard Dean. Mr. "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks", now it takes a real dumbass to say a comment like that one.
 
Bravo FL270

I'm tired of hearing GW called stupid, Moron etc. He was a fighter pilot, right? Or do they just hand out that title to all Ivy league grads?

I've yet to hear where the Dems last poster boy (Al Gore) got his education. And few people could be considered a bigger "ass in the world" than Al (However, Dr. Dean is working hard to look as foolish).

Just a few days ago Al was refering to Iraq, as "that quagmire", I'm not sure, but somehow I think we need to be there a bit longer to start calling it a quagmire. But, considering Al's inability to grasp time and space, to him it may seem like one. Hell, my dog thinks I've been gone for weeks, when all I've done is check the mail (I guess as great minds go, so do small ones).
 
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(However, Dr. Dean is working hard to look as foolish).


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Yeah, have you seen the Bush commerical where they have Dean screaming, "thank you very much, thank you very much!"
 
*holds a sign saying 'Squawkbox'*

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*holds a sign saying 'Squawkbox'*

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Dammit! I started this thread about a C-17 getting an engine taken-out by a MANPAD and it gets turned into a ****fest about politics.

On the other hand, ya' think Pratt&Whitney will let 'em use the warranty?
 
I am glad the crew got down safe and sound, shows what a good crew and plane can do.

As for Iraq, it sure is easy to Monday night quarterback Bush's decisions but this is far from over so who knows. Besides there are positives we don't see, I don't think there is a Government in the world that would knowingly allow terrorists to launch an attack from their country against the USA just in case we found out and replace them too. As for quarterbacking perhaps this crap is a result of Clinton's wussy foreign policy, hmmm. By the way, the Marines, I have had the privelage to talk with say the TV is full of crap that there is a lot of good being done over there.

Best wishes and happy holidays.
 
I agree Lil Cricket. Chunk posted a message in the Squawk Box about a US representative who went over and said that the media is totally distorting the picture. Let's face it: bad news sells more newspapers than good.

Additionally, I was talking to a soldier in the airport a couple of days ago. He had been home for two weeks and was returning to Iraq. He said that in his view things were going well and we didn't need any additional troops.

I think that Bush has learned from history and is taking great pains to make sure this isn't another Vietnam. In Vietnam, LBJ micromanaged the war, down to picking targets for the bombers. Most indications that I've seen are that Bush is letting the soldiers fight the war. In Vietnam, we started small and sent more and more troops. In Iraq, we started with the right number to finish the job. In Vietnam, we lost the moral high ground when we supported the coup that removed the elected President Diem. In Iraq, we are working to turn the country over to an Iraqi government. In Iraq, we also hold the moral high ground because we removed a genocidal dictator who supported terrorism. Even the fighters we face today are increasingly targeting civilians. And most importantly, in Vietnam, we didn't lose, we cut and run. Bush has stated that as long as he is president, we will be there until the job is finished. The only way we will cut and run is if Howard Dean is elected.

These are just a couple of examples off the top of my head.

BTW Aloft, I love the avatar.
 
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The only way we will cut and run is if Howard Dean is elected.


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That's a pretty bold statement, Dave. Care to back that up with a quote from Dean?

Other than that, you must be a fortune teller.
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Several of the Democrats have said that we need to start withdrawing from Iraq immediately. Dean opposed the war from the beginning, so the statement was my analysis of the situation.
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Several of the Democrats have said that we need to start withdrawing from Iraq immediately. Dean opposed the war from the beginning, so the statement was my analysis of the situation.
wink.gif


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Actually, the only one who actually said get out immediately is that whacko from Ohio whose name I can't spell. The rest of them say get the UN in there to take over and then bring our soldiers back or that we're stuck there now but we need a new game plan.
 
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so the statement was my analysis of the situation.

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"analysis"..... riiiiight. Is that what you Right-winged Kids are calling "guesses" nowadays???
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(for the record - before anyone gets their gutchies in a wad - Dave and I have a great deal of respect for one another and we're just jabbin'.)
 
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Actually, the only one who actually said get out immediately is that whacko from Ohio whose name I can't spell. The rest of them say get the UN in there to take over and then bring our soldiers back or that we're stuck there now but we need a new game plan.

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Not really true. Dennis Kucinich (I think that's who you mean) says first get the U.N. in, then get the U.S. out. Here's a link to his stand on this issue.
In fact, Kucinich was probably the most vocal against the war in Iraq from the get-go, more so than even Dean.
 
No problem, R2F. I didn't mean to imply that was definitely for pulling the US out immediately. I was just contrasting his views with the Bush's. In fact, from looking at his web site, I don't see a definite statement from him as to what he would do with Iraq. He is more susceptible to the people who want all the soldiers home yesterday though, because that is his base.

Here is some of what he does say:

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As President, I would set four goals for American leadership:

First, defeat the threat posed by terrorists, tyrants, and technologies of mass destruction.

Second, strengthen our alliances and ensure Russia and China are fully integrated into a stable international order.

Third, enlarge the circle of beneficiaries of the growing world economy.

And fourth, ensure that life on our fragile planet is sustainable.

Preemptive war against tyrannical dictators is not a comprehensive strategy for addressing the threat that terrorists, tyrants, and technologies of mass destruction pose in the 21st century.

In fact, misuse of the doctrine may have the opposite effect.

In the profession of medicine, the first rule is to do no harm. To deal with the long-term terrorist threat we must root out and destroy the terrorists, their networks and their support systems. But in doing so, we must not provide them with a rationale for new recruits....

I opposed President Bush’s war in Iraq from the beginning. While Saddam Hussein’s regime was clearly evil and needed to be disarmed, it did not present an immediate threat to U.S. security that would justify going to war, particularly going to war alone



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I'm not sure how he intends to meet those goals.


So basically, Howard Dean may not call for removing troops now, but many of his supporters do. I believe that he would be more likely to end up removing them prematurely than Bush would.

As to the UN, we did try, and would have succeeded if it had not been for the French veto threat. Since then they've opposed our postwar strategy as well, and I havn't heard of anything that has happened to change their minds. Likewise, I havn't seen anything to indicate that NATO would be more likely to commit troops than they were this time last year.

I'd also like to point out that we do have a coalition in place and did not go it alone.

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The State Department's list of 30 countries that are members of a "Coalition for the Immediate Disarmament of Iraq'':

Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan (post conflict), Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan.


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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/18/iraq/main544517.shtml

Additionally, remember the Italian troops that were killed in the terror attack a few weeks ago? There is already a coalition in place.
 
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I'd also like to point out that we do have a coalition in place and did not go it alone.

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Yeah, but other than the Brits, the other countries in the coalition have a very low number of soldiers on the ground.

Let's put it this way. The number of soldiers the US has lost probably is higher than the number of troops deployed by each country on that list.
 
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