U.S. military says copter down in Iraq

..the Iranians have their own versions of the Stinger, and there is the possibility that a country may provide missiles to anti-US insurgents in Iraq. (See also Anza, a series of Chinese developed, IR-guided shoulder-fired surface to air missiles, under licensed production in Pakistan.) That's why this is feels different, yet the same -- different superpower, same solution.

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First, U.S. military helicopter pilots in Iraq tried flying low and fast, hoping to elude heat-seeking missiles fired by insurgents.
The insurgents responded with high-caliber machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, which proved deadly, and the loss rate for U.S. helicopters soared.
So the pilots went high — and the insurgents responded with lethal surface-to-air missiles.
Now this grim exchange may have claimed more victims. A U.S. Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter was lost Wednesday 20 miles northeast of Baghdad, the fifth helicopter that has gone down in Iraq in three weeks.
Five Marines and two Navy hospital corpsmen on board were killed.
A U.S. military statement gave no reason for the crash. An Iraqi air force officer said the helicopter was downed by an anti-aircraft missile. An Iraqi farmer about a half-mile from the crash site said he heard a missile fired moments before the crash, which occurred in an insurgent-infested region.

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BLUEJACKET said:

Could you provide the link to the video? Thanks!

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BLUEJACKET said:

Thanks! I doubt that MANPADs are of the Iranian origin- if they were the evidence would have been presented by now.

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The plan to

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has been in the works since Bush inaugurated that country into his "axis of evil" in January 2002. Bush's 2006 National Military Strategy says, "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran." In April 2006, Seymour Hersh revealed the US military was making preparations for an invasion of Iran. "Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups," Hersh learned from current and former American military intelligence officials.
.."There is solid evidence," said a State Department spokesman on 24 January, "that Iranian agents are involved in these networks and that they are working with individuals and groups in Iraq and are being sent there by the Iranian government." Like Bush's and Blair's claim that they had irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein was deploying weapons of mass destruction, the "evidence" lacks all credibility. Iran has a natural affinity with the Shi'ite majority of Iraq, and has been implacably opposed to al-Qaeda, condemning the 9/11 attacks and supporting the United States in Afghanistan. Syria has done the same. Investigations by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and others, including British military officials, have concluded that Iran is not engaged in the cross-border supply of weapons. General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said no such evidence exists. ..According to

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, American professor of Modern Middle East History, and other Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad did not call for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He said, "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." This, says Cole, "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all." Ahmadinejad compared the demise of the Jerusalem regime to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The one piece of "solid evidence" is

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posed by the United States. An American naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is almost certainly part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022, which is the aerial bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 35, entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization, was issued. It is classified, of course, but the presumption has long been that NSPD 35 authorized the stockpiling and deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This does not mean Bush will use them against Iran, but for the first time since the most dangerous years of the cold war, the use of what were then called "limited" nuclear weapons is being openly discussed in Washington. What they are debating is the prospect of other Hiroshimas and of radioactive fallout across the Middle East and Central Asia. Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker last year that American bombers "have been flying simulated nuclear weapons delivery missions...since last summer."
The well-informed Arab Times in Kuwait says Bush will attack Iran before the end of April. One of Russia's most senior military strategists, General Leonid Ivashov says the US will use nuclear munitions delivered by Cruise missiles launched in the Mediterranean. "The war in Iraq," he wrote on 24 January, "was just one element in a series of steps in the process of regional destabilization. It was only a phase in getting closer to dealing with Iran and other countries. [When the attack on Iran begins] Israel is sure to come under Iranian missile strikes. Posing as victims, the Israelis will suffer some tolerable damage and then an outraged US will destabilize Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of retribution . . . Public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian hysteria, leaks, disinformation etcetera . . .
..

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, Americans have virtually no control over their government between elections. President Bush has two years to go and can do anything he wants to, including taking us to war with Iran. Government propaganda against Iran is following the exact same pattern as propaganda against Iraq. It is accusing Iran of seeking nuclear weapons in the face of evidence to the contrary. Now it is accusing Iran of making improvised explosive devices for the Iraqi insurgents.
..practically everyone in Congress knew that President Bush intended to invade Iraq irrespective of what Saddam had done, was doing, or intended to do.
..Well, it’s four years later, and practically everyone in the rest of the world – if not Congress – knows what country is

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.
.."If there exists a reckless determination for a new war in the Middle East, I fear that the attorneys of the Executive Branch are already seeking ways to tie this war to the use of force resolution for Iraq, or the resolution passed in response to 9/11.
"But the American people need only be reminded about the untruths of Iraq’s supposed ties to the 9/11 attacks so see how far the truth can be stretched in order to achieve the desired outcome.

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