16 killed as U.S. chopper goes down

Dom

March 21 — A U.S. Marine Corps helicopter crashed Friday morning inside Kuwait, killing all four U.S. and 12 British troops aboard, defense officials said. Officials told NBC News that the incident did not involve hostile fire.

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Dom

Number now lowered to 12.

raid517

This is what make it all so real for me. I saw the faces of those young boys in the desert in Kuwait and I wondered what they were thinking, how they were feeling... I know they are brave, but they all looked so scared and helpless. When people hear of things like this happening they tend to think of it in academic terms, but I for one could only think of how the families of these poor boys must feel right now.

Having said that I am quite surprise as to the extent that British forces have been involved, and am impressed by the very good account they have given of themselves so far. I am pleased too that the 'shock and awe' strategy has so far proved unnecessary too, since that amount of bombs in such a short time could only have resulted in huge devastation for ordinary Iraqis.

So all I can say is so far so good. No one can accuse us of 'carpet bombing' the civilian population and Iraqi forces have offered at best minimal resistance. I saw 8 B-52 bombers taking off today, so that's roughly 400 tons of bombs heading for targets in Northern Iraq, so hopefully when our troops get there they won't have too much trouble.

This isn't like the last war where everything was shown on TV, so it is a little frustrating to listen to the constant speculation in the media. But as far as I can work out, everything is going a lot better than expected. I hope this will all be over very soon.

Q

Ps

I wonder though, does this excuse the UK from criticism when British troops are dying in defence of an American objective? I mean, was it really so terribly wrong that we should agonise over sending our young men to their deaths? As I said before, I think when you do have so much at stake this kind of entitles you to be concerned. In any case I hope our troops stay safe and remain in the thick of the action until this is well and truly over. Its too late to agonise about the rights and wrongs of it all now.

Dom

Two more Americans died, this time it wasn't an accident, they were killed by enemy fire.

craig5320

The deaths from the crash are now 8 British 4 US, 12 in total, Rest In Peace.

UberLord

May the innocent Iraqi citizens killed in the bombings RIP also