Highway 431 Blog

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Shelby and Cramer dodging RPG's over Iraq

The news broke a couple of days ago that as a C130 was leaving Iraq with a cargo of congress critters the plane was fired upon. Bud Cramer and Richard Shelby happened to be in this festive party and, luckily, escaped unscathed (which cannot be said for thousands of our troops over the couse of this occupation). I just e-mailed Cramer asking if his assertion that "the surge" has improved conditions in Baghdad remains the same. This entire fiasco in Iraq is more about pork and corporate pay-offs than it is about spreading democracy!

Read this article from Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi.

Now that that rant is out of the way I'm curious about some details of the story of the rpg fire on the Hercules C130. This plane was supposedly 30 minutes out of Baghdad and flying at 6000 feet at night. This plane could not have been very visible and I have been around C130s a lot having lived very near the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Ga. some years ago and they they are not especially loud. I'm also curious to know just what the vertical range of a rpg would be. I just can't believe that a plane flying at 6000 feet would be vulnerable to such a weapon!

There must be more to this story than what we're being told!

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