[From the diaries by susanhu with slight format edit.] With timing that could not be more horrible for George Bush, one of our Chinook helicopters with 17 service people aboard went down in Afghanistan yesterday, the news hitting the wires here about 1100 pst. All through the day the status of our men was “unknown.” As of this morning, 19 hours later, their fate is still “unknown.”
Every family of every person serving in Afghanistan instantly worried and is still worried sick this very second about their loved ones. It’s been an extremely difficult 19 hours for them.
Please tell us the fate of our service people on that helicopter now. After the treatment Pat Tillman got I simply assume the military lies when it feels it needs to, and with the timing of the Chimperor’s speech yesterday I’m positive we’re being lied to–again.
“Unknown.” Afghan forces have sealed off the area, but they have no communication devices? “Support aircraft” are in the area, but no observations can be communicated? We’ve got a Chinook out there but cannot instantly dispatch another helicopter to report what happened?
“This is a tragic event for all of use, and our hearts and prayers go out to the families, loved ones and service members still fighting in the area,” said Brig. Gen. Greg Champion.
The New York Times and the AP wire have the story prominently displayed, but nowhere in their stories are these sentences:
“Despite the fact that US forces have the most sophisticated “support aircraft” in the world, multiple layers of communication devices, Special Forces, and Afghan supporting forces on the scene military officials still insisted they have no news of the 17 men aboard.”
“Military officials consistently refused to speculate when the news would be released.”
“Military officials insisted the Pat Tillman episode, where the military lied for propaganda purposes, did not erode their credibility in reporting this incident.”
Until I see sentences like that not only am I going to assume we’re being lied to again, I know the war felons running our country are yet again being enabled in their lying by a compliant, complicit corporate press.
The Left Coaster extends its deepest sympathies to all the families with service people serving in Afghanistan. May your loved ones come home soon, whole in mind in spirit. Our thoughts and prayers are with you in this time of trial.
[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster, The Daily Kos and MyDD]
The same thoughts occured to me. We don’t want to upset Bush’s ratings. The “best military in the world” can’t get information about a crash 19 hours after it happened? Fuck me. Watch for the announcement to come late Friday afternoon, when the compliant press can bury it.
I also offer my deep sympathy and support to all those with loved ones serving in Afghanistan.
I agree with you entirely, Nag … Yesterday afternoon, Raw Story posted a report that 16 were dead, but most news services stuck to the “unknown” phrase.
In fairness, CNN showed footage of the area where the copter went down. It’s very mountainous and very rugged.
However, I think the delay had everything to do with timing the news to not spoil Bush’s speech.
I want this story out there. God damn it it just can’t be that my country lies to the relatives of men killed in action just so Bush can save face. Jesus.
I’ll be writing a separate entry today about showing up here. A complex swirl of feelings and observations.
and again and again.
I was watching a show on SciFi last night about the story of Wells’ War of the Worlds broadcast. They emphasized the power of the radio and the ways in which public panic was spread through Wells’ masterful use of “illusion” and the effects of the audience’s ability fill in their appropriate “boogeyman”…
What stuck with me through to this morning is that once people got over being afriad, they were very, very angry (in another country, I forget which, they actually burned the rasio station to the ground and six people died). I’m not a psychologist, but I have to wonder, if people in this country DO start “waking up” and their fear turns to anger, what kind of conflagarations are we going to see?
I wish Wells’was alive today.
that it is really creeping me out to think that this “war on liberals is a calculated way to channel the coming shitstorm of anger — away from the people who actually deserve every last wrathful minute of it.
That’s something most everybody knows about, and I think (hope) some of that anger is already beginning in the old-time conservative gop side. After reading your comment, I found this snip:
In a prescient column, in the New York Tribune [1940s?], Dorothy Thompson foresaw that the broadcast revealed the way politicians could use the power of mass communications to create theatrical illusions, to manipulate the public.
“All unwittingly, Mr. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time,” she wrote. “They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create a nation-wide panic.
“They have demonstrated more potently than any argument, demonstrated beyond a question of a doubt, the appalling dangers and enormous effectiveness of popular and theatrical demagoguery….
“Hitler managed to scare all of Europe to its knees a month ago, but he at least had an army and an air force to back up his shrieking words.
“But Mr. Welles scared thousands into demoralization with nothing at all.” [Just as bushco is doing now.]
http://www.transparencynow.com/welles.htm
Thanks! That quote is exactly what I was talking about…
My only quibble with it is this:
It may seem like “nothing at all” but what is really being manipulated here is the dark boogeymen(and women) in all of us…it is something very powerful, especially when it is brought to fore with pickle jars and silence….
Our minds can conjure up powerful fears, especially without visuals. Because it was on the radio, the visuals were in people’s minds. No wonder they were terrified!
And the silence of bushco’s secrecy encourages people’s minds to evoke fearful images that aren’t real. The conjured up WMD and the religious right’s fear of sex are so like Welles’ monsters!
Of course they are. And all of the anxiety and nightmares and pain of the families who wait be damned.
They are cruel, cruel, cruel bastards and I wish them all ill.
that kills nineteen? They are going to sit on this as long as they can and claim notification of family before releasing names and because so many were involved that will eat up time they will claim! You won’t hear any names until Friday afternoon, maybe later if they play their cards right. If it hits the newscycle now it’ll be up there today and tomorrow and Friday! God, we may even get crying family members up there on Saturday morning at that rate…..no “F”ing way! Let everybody start out their Monday with crying family members, they’ll all be distracted trying to fuel up the car on Monday! We cannot have a shootdown that kills nineteen in the real terrorist harboring country that we never really addressed right after George’s speech and right in the middle of the week damn it! Well, Iraq is a terrorist harboring country now too I guess thanks to us. Oh fuckity fuck fuck fuck!
Hey, Tracy. Good you added what you know … you know more than most of us can imagine.
The Taleban claim they have a video of the shoot down.
The helicopter crashed in an mountainous region, difficult to access.
They claim that it is difficult to access and maybe so, but they were only 1-2 km from the landing zone. Either the terrain is total hell or someone is lying a little bit and if we all get to see the video then we will all know now won’t we! The only thing that I hate about these videos is that occassionally someones family can identify a family member and they witness their last moments. That sucks!
may not be willing to air it to the American public.
This event must be sheer torture for you Tracy. It’s hard to read about it with tears in my eyes.
Best regards to you and your family.
I have had to do one of those sit and wait for word things once and that was really horrible. If the Taliban gets a video up on the net, it usually makes network in some form even if it is cleaned up version because people are usually too curious. I hate it when family members see their loved ones in the videos.
Canada’s Globe & Mail
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
The site, http://www.americasupportsyou.mil, offers news and other information about military men and women and provides forums for well-wishers to send them messages of encouragement.
The Taliban is claiming responsibility I just read on yahoo and they say that they have a video of the shootdown. They say that they are going to post it to their websit http://www.alemarah.com, but it isn’t up yet. If they put a video of it up nobody is going to be able to sit on this, Rove’s ass isn’t even big enough to try to hide this for a few days!
Ismail said that the crashed helicopter was on its way to help the four soldiers and transfer reinforcements when it was shot down.
Al-Jazeera
God, that makes it even more heartbreaking.
Ouch, Ouch, Ouch…..have we ever looked more like God’s forsaken people right after the Fuehrer has just given a speech?
And if it’s true, makes it even less likely that the truth will surface, or the announcements will come quickly – they’ll have to space out the confirmations and the stories to minimize the potential for “21 soldiers killed in single clusterf*! of an operation” kind of headlines.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050629/ts_nm/afghan_casualties_dc
Rest in peace.
And this is not the highest death toll in a copter crash there — although the cause of that one was not attributed to ground fire.
The Pentagon is not yet attributing this one to ground fire . . . but it’s not claiming other causes, so it sounds like it will.
You’re fucking telling me we can’t get a government official to go on the record with this?
Despicable.
I mean, you never have an “unidentified official” telling the press how wonderful everything’s going.
The latest official press release still says 17 on board / unknown how many survived, etc.
Just horrible. Raw Story has it as a huge headline too.
sad, angry, heartbroken, did I say appalled. They didn’t release the news of how many deaths because of that asswipes speech to Murika. may George Bush and all his asswipe cronies burn in hell, right after they rot in a prison that has torture chambers.
MSNBC just said that a number of Navy SEALs were on the flight.
the military that dead are from it means that immediate family has now all been notified. You have never witnessed crazier people trying to find stuff out than family that is afraid and trying to find stuff out! If press was around and it is leaked early who within the military got hit the spouses of those units will call each other and attempt to find out who has spoke to their spouse and who it might be and who it can’t be. It gets crazy! They usually give the families 24 hours before making names public so that families can be prepared for the public. I really believe that they will stretch this out though timewise as much as possible. If they are saying Navy Seals on board though now that means that immediate families have been notified.
You really help us understand these situations, Tracy. Thanks so much.
about what I understand of the workings of my sector of America. So many people out there have clarified and allowed me to understand what is happening in so many other sectors and areas. I suppose it is a trade off. I wish more military in pain felt able to speak freely right now.
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Just a few months ago a passenger flight coming into Bagram airport crashed within 15 miles of destination. The mountains and terrain are so rugged, it took more than 36 hours to locate the crash site. Compared to area where Chinook went down, the mountains near Kabul are a local outdoors national park!
Kabul – Feb 6, 2005 — The wreckage of an Afghan passenger plane missing since Thursday was found today (Saturday) in mountains 20 kilometers east of the capital, and NATO and Afghan officials say all 104 people on board appear to have died. Airline officials say there were 23 foreign nationals aboard the aircraft, including nine Turks and six Americans. Four Russian crew members were also on board.
Afghan Transport Minister Enayatullah Qasemi told the Associated Press the cause of the crash remains unknown.
Reuters news agency reports that the wreckage has been found near the capital, Kabul. There were 96 passengers and eight crew members on the Kam Air Boeing 737 that went missing on its flight from from Herat to Kabul, after it was turned away from the capital’s airport because of a severe snow storm. Officials say the pilot had contacted an airport in neighbouring Pakistan for permission to land, then was not heard from again.
NATO peace keepers led a ground and air search for the missing jet when there were no reported sightings or recorded landings in Afghanistan or neighbouring countries.
ISAF Operation at KAMAIR plane crash site
[It were the Dutch helicopter crews from NATO-ISAF who located the wreckage]
The American viewer has lost track of what’s happening in Afghanistan, I tried to follow some news items and have written several diaries on Afghanistan. The US Special Forces have been strengthened by allies, included are 300 men and women from The Netherlands. These troops are operating under US Command and are completely separate from the NATO and ISAF Forces stationed near Kabul.
The fate of those on board the helicopter, which crashed near Asadabad in Kunar province, was not immediately known, the military said. A statement said the cause of the crash was unclear, as was the number of people on board. Other helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft were deployed to the site, the military said. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara had no other details.
Provincial Gov. Asadullah Wafa told The Associated Press that the Taliban downed the aircraft with a rocket. He gave no other details. Purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi called the AP before news of the crash was released and claimed that the rebels shot the helicopter down.
Royal Marine’s of 45 Commando near Khost in 2002
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I notice they’re always of buff guys in uniforms.
HMMMM! See I didn’t catch that right off. Maybe I see that a little too often and I have been buff man in uniform desensitized…….that can’t be a good thing! Hey Oui, if you ever need a hook up just let me know……I know of few of these guys on the loose right now. In fact according to the latest stats about 75% of them are on the loose now…..I know, I’m sick!
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This was settled!
I hope no one’s disappointed! I’m not.
So … I do prefer a Tracy or Susan and leave the guys to their task!
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I thought you were putting up those pics for ME and TRACY!
And I know buff chicks in uniform! I don’t have any photos though, at least not for free.
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Photos are a great gift provided by organizations through Internet to get real impression under what difficult circumstances operations in the field are carried out.
It’s always magnificent to find these photos, especially on my son’s computer with flat screen 1024×768 pixels. I used passed week to update his pc with Internet connection and all software updates of several years, to full satisfaction of … myself.
I haven’t mentioned it to him yet the updates are done! So it’s still running next to mine in the office for multi-tasking – BooMan Tribune on his and European Tribune on mine.
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