Tag: Antiwar movement

LA Times reports:

The company said the decision was made after supply trucks protected by U.S. soldiers were attacked Friday by Iraqi insurgents just outside Baghdad, resulting in the death of one employee from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root. Seven others are missing or held hostage. A soldier was also killed in the incident, and two others are missing.

Privately, company officials expressed concerns about the level of security provided to the convoy. Halliburton’s fuel convoys are protected by U.S. soldiers under the terms of a contract signed in December 2001.

“For the safety and security of convoys, the Army and KBR jointly made the decision to suspend some convoys at this time until additional security efforts can be put in place by the military to provide the new level of security necessary to move supplies into Iraq,” said Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman. “KBR is resolved to continue support of the U.S. troops and to fulfill all contract obligations.”

Halliburton’s inability to move freely about the country offers evidence of how the rapidly declining security situation in Iraq — and the military’s reliance on private contractors to supply troops and rebuild the country — could hurt the U.S. mission.

This is not surprising, considering the number of convoys that have been destoyed in the past week or so. It’s likely that the troops around Fallujah especially are running out of fuel for their vehicles, and this heretofore unreported angle is a major consideration in the “ceasefire” the US was practically begging for this weekend.

Glenn Reynolds contemplates nuclear annihilation with a chuckle. There is no longer any excuse for any decent person, much less libertarian, to associate with this vile SOB. I realize that the appellations “decent” and “libertarian” don’t in any way describe most of the folks on this list, but if Kos is a monster who must be de-linked, then what can one say of “Kill ’em all” Glenn?

I’m not one of these “evil evil evil” simpletons; Reynolds certainly advocates many evil things, but if he ever wrote anything interesting, I could see keeping him blogrolled. Hey, some people read Mein Kampf for its insights into propaganda. But lifting huge chunks from the same people day in and day out (Jarvis, Steyn, Sullivan, Frum) and appending “indeed” or “this strikes me as a good thing” to the end is hardly indispensable commentary.

Sikorsky Down – Where’s the crew?

The US military has confirmed that an H-53 Sikorsky helicopter has been shot down in the guerilla-held area between Baghdad and Fallujah. They very pointedly say that there is no indication that the crew was killed or injured. What they deo not say is that the crew has been rescued.

The Marines are claiming that the helicopter was blown up to “prevent looting.” Translation: We could not recover the helicopter or the crew.

There was no immediate word on casualties from the crash of the helicopter, which an Associated Press reporter saw burning 12 miles east of Fallujah in the village of Zawbaa. Witnesses said they saw a rocket hit the craft.

U.S. troops who converged on the site were attacked by gunmen, the reporter said. Witnesses said four U.S. soldiers were hit.

More weirdness about this helicopter crash:

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFX) – A US MH-53 helicopter crashed southeast of here, but it was not clear how many people were aboard, a marine officer said.

The officer said the cause of the crash was not immediately known.

He said it was not a Marine Corps helicopter, but one belonging to another US government agency.

A few stories are starting to surface that claim the crew was rescued, but they are vague and contradictory.

Here’s the AP’s contribution to the “crew rescued” line:

Fallujah, Iraq-AP — A U-S Marine commander says it appears no one was injured when a military helicopter crashed outside the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

The cause of the crash is still not known. U-S troops were able to extract the crew from the wreck.

The commander says it was an H-53 Sikorski helicopter — and that after it crashed, troops exploded the wreckage to prevent looting.

About a dozen Iraqi fighters were gathered near the crash site. One told an Associated Press reporter that he’d shot the chopper down with a rocket-propelled grenade. The military still hasn’t determined the cause of the crash.

The Marine commander says the military team that secured the craft came under mortar fire and was also ambushed by gunmen as it withdrew. The team apparently suffered casualties, but details aren’t available.

Very mysterious. What “governmental agency” was on that chopper? Why would a “governmental agency” be flying a Sikorsky?

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UPDATE and Correction: There appear to be two versions of this story, one referring to a MH-53 Sikorsky, which an alert and knowledgeable AntiWar reader points out is a “big heavy helicopter designed for low level penetration, typically used by Special Operations groups,” and an Apache, which is a two-man attack helicopter. Jim Henley points out in the version of this story posted on my blog, that “”Other Government Agency” (aka “OGA”) is more or less official military slang for CIA.”

The details of the accounts of the crash seem to overlap, so it is unclear whether there are two separate instances of a helicopter going down or one instance and incorrect identification of the helicopter type in the case of the stories mentioning an Apache.

U.S. Apache helicopter down outside Fallujah
Last Update: 4/13/2004 7:04:15 AM

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) – A U.S. Apache helicopter crashed and was in flames on the ground Tuesday outside Fallujah after witnesses said it was hit by a rocket.
[…]
There was no immediate word on casualties from the crash of the helicopter, which an Associated Press reporter say burning 12 miles east of Fallujah in the village of Zawbaa. Witnesses said they saw a rocket hit the craft.

U.S. troops who converged on the site were attacked by gunmen, the reporter said. Witnesses said four U.S. soldiers were hit.

I’ll update this post again when it becomes clear which version is correct. The original “Apache” headline has been edited.

Jo Wilding travels into Fallujah:

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that’s not burnt, stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people and a few possessions, heading the other way, past the improvised refreshment posts along the way where boys throw food through the windows into the bus for us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin and has cleared this with them. The reason I’m on the bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate in Falluja, he’d been bringing out children with their limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were being stopped at the US military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.

He said aid vehicles and the media were being turned away. He said there was some medical aid that needed to go in and there was a better chance of it getting there with foreigners, westerners, to get through the american checkpoints. The rest of the way was secured with the armed groups who control the roads we’d travel on. We’d take in the medical supplies, see what else we could do to help and then use the bus to bring out people who needed to leave.

I’ll spare you the whole decision making process, all the questions we all asked ourselves and each other, and you can spare me the accusations of madness, but what it came down to was this: if I don’t do it, who will? Either way, we arrive in one piece. … read more

Lawrence of Cyberia offers this quote, by Yossi Sarid MK, Former Israeli Minister of Education, in We cannot let death have dominion, as Quote of the Week:

We are still trying to count, and to remember them as individuals, but with so many dead, it’s hard to keep track. You wish you could remember them all, but you can’t. But we’re making an effort, because to lose count is to lose one’s humanity.

He juxtaposes this quote with a photo of the “Coffin Display” arranged by Israeli and Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace.

I’ll add this quote to the mosaic of pain:

“We don’t do body counts” General Tommy Franks, US Central Command.

William F. Buckley sez we can’t leave Iraq just yet because:

1) The old concern that Shiites and Sunnis would fire up sectarian hostility to dismember the state is taking a back seat to the concern that they are forgetting their differences in order to fight jointly — for the expulsion of the American military.

2) Our program to train an Iraqi peacekeeping constabulary is in disarray. Many Iraqis trained and pressed into duty fled from the onrush of dissenters and terrorists, in some cases joining with them. There were reports of trucks and cars designated as equipment for Iraqi police which, in the pell-mell of midweek, were turned over to, or taken by, the terrorists for use in their anti-American war.

3) Sentiment in neighboring Arab countries that could be said to have been tolerant of the U.S. enterprise seems markedly to have turned. This is in part because our friendship in this quarter is the friendship of summer soldiers. But in part also because some Arab observers have concluded that the U.S. is not going to pull off the grand enterprise we took on. Some phrase their criticisms with no attempt to conceal their contempt. “Thank God that the American administration is too stupid to win the Iraqis over,” one Islamist lawyer in Cairo reported to The New York Times. “On the contrary, they create feelings of frustration and commit more mistakes, leading more Iraqis to rise against them.”

That manila folder labeled Things They Should Have Thought of Before Invading has long since burst from overstuffing. Who would have guessed that Iraqis might reject occupation on both religious and nationalist grounds? That creating and maintaining a collaborationist police/military force might be a tad difficult? That even the neighboring Arabs who weren’t furious about the invasion might turn on an unsuccessful occupation? Who woulda thunk all that?

Contra Jim Henley, I consider it not only acceptable but imperative to point out that the warmongers were wrong and we were right, because, like all good bureaucrats, they’re not going to stop at one failure. Since the American attention span is shorter than the childhood of a fruit fly, we had better take full advantage of this moment to emphasize just how wrong the warmongers have been.