March 31, 2003
Another helicopter went down (for
Another helicopter went down (for "undetermined reasons") in southern Iraq, killing three of our marines. Seriously, should we be using these things? I've lost track of how many we've managed to crash by now (six?), but I know the human losses have been significant (thirty? forty?), and this is ridiculous. Have we even lost that many men in the actual fighting? By now, probably, but still, wow.
And here's a delightful little story, hidden as a quiet little paragraph in the middle of a story from the LA Times:
During Sunday's encounter, a car approached a U.S. checkpoint along a road outside the city. This time, airborne commanders said, American troops spotted three armed men inside and called in a mortar attack. One round destroyed the car and killed the men.This is after a car bomb the previous day had killed four US soldiers (and one suicide bomber). At first, it seems pretty straightforward: our military is defending itself. But... they saw armed men in a car? Yeah, no kidding, I'd be surprised if there was anyone around there that wasn't armed. But more importantly: they saw three armed men in a car? What? Suicide bombers don't come in threes! They send in the minimal number of people to staff each bomb, usually one, occasionally two for really complicated stuff. But a simple car bomb only needs one. Those weren't suicide bombers. But even that isn't directly relevant: the US has now established that it believes it has the right to lob artillery at and utterly destroy stuff for any reason at all. "We thought it was a carful of suicide bombers."
Lovely.
On a slightly lighter note, I was amused at the byline on this article. Usually they put a city there, like "WASHINGTON", or "NETANYA, Israel". Here, they put "WITH U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ". God only knows where.
"It's not PDA! We weren't making out, we were just french kissing. And
it wasn't public, it was on a bus." --Carly Robinson
Posted
by blahedo
at 9:31am
on 31 Mar 2003
