US military copter crashes in Germany

[PacerLJ35]

Source: CNN Online

Berlin, Germany (CNN) -- A U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Germany on Wednesday, killing three crew members, U.S. Army public affairs specialist Bruce Anderson said. A police officer in the German state of Hesse put the crash site near Darmstadt, south of Frankfurt, near a helicopter landing site in Mannheim.

Names of the victims were being withheld pending notification of relatives, Anderson said.

The cause of the crash was under investigation, he said.

The state of Hesse is in west-central Germany.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/02/03/military.helicopter.crash/index.html?hpt=T2

[proud patriot]

1. oh dear !

[gimama]

2. Condolences to all concerned :(

Worn out equipment,
worn out policies,
worn out Personnel..
Bring 'em ALL Home, NOW.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. I am so sorry for them and their families.

[JDPriestly]

4. My sympathy to the families of those who were injured and killed.

[Plucketeer]

5. And WHY are we still IN Germany???

OR Japan, OR Italy, OR all the other "soverign nations"??? :crazy:

[bemildred]

6. They still appreciate our money. nt

[jmowreader]

7. Because there are still very bad people in the world

and having troops forward deployed in Germany has two positive benefits: if you have to go somewhere and kill these bad people it's quicker to load out of Ramstein Air Base than to leave from Fort Hood; and not putting them next door to Al Qaeda's stomping grounds makes the AQ guys have to go through German immigration--who has the ability to actually STOP terrorists unlike the Keystone Kops TSA--to get to the troops.

It's also one hell of a recruiting incentive: we'll pay you to live in Europe for three years.

[Plucketeer]

13. You mean like our BIG presence in Saudi Arabia

protected us from the 9/11 gang?

[PacerLJ35]

14. The US presence in Saudi prior to 9/11 wasn't focused on AQ

It was mostly USAF folks enforcing the no-fly zones in Iraq, with a smattering of other people from the other branches.

[Plucketeer]

17. It was, nonetheless, a "presence"..... AND....

a provocation FOR the AQ attack! Just as is our 51st state - Israel. How long are we gonna have their back?? - and to what end - so the prophecies can play out and lay the stage for the rapture???

[PacerLJ35]

23. I'm pretty sure AQ would have found another excuse as a "provocation" to kill innocent civilians

had we NOT been in Saudi...it wouldn't have really mattered. Most of the die-hard AQ folks see their entire purpose in life (and their place in history) as an epic battle of the true Islam battling the non-believers. Maybe some of their foot soldiers aren't that whacked, but the people central to AQ are.

[Plucketeer]

26. If you can believe what Bin Laden said (says),

the main provocation was the US's fingers being in every arab nation that had oil or some other commodity that our resource-sucking society needs like a constant fix. This while the citizenry of tgose lands see nothing of the vast monies made by the opportunists. Now, I'm not here to defend AQ at all, but ya gotta give 'em SOME credit if they've gotten the notion that we "infidels" are out to plunder the unsuspecting.

Sure they talk tough and can recruit suicide attackers. When you have real religious convictions and BELIEVE that there's a fabulous reward in return for your sacrafice, it probably seems like the right thing to do (I'm SO glad I never fell for any of the supreme being BS!) No - this country needs to stop taking advantage of other countries natural wealths.

Think our approach isn't stupid? Define for me what a "WIN" would look like in this war on terror. As long as there's a simple prankster to throw a firecracker into a crowd of folks, there'll be terrorism. As long as there's some loon who gets his nuts in a wad and decides he needs to exact some "justice", terrorism will still exist.

[jmowreader]

21. No. And guess what: NOTHING could have protected us from the 9/11 gang

Let's start out with the fact the Pentagon was running a simulation on the morning of 9/11 in which they called the bad guys Al Qaeda. In the Cold War we ran a lot of exercises with Simulated Soviets, and we always called them Krasnovians. Always. Our allies were the Mojavians. We did this for two reasons. Say the exercise we were on called for the 47th Guards Tank Division to depart from its garrisons in the Hillersleben area and go to Marienborn. (Marienborn was right on the inter-German border.) This exercise could have happened anywhere--in California, on a map board, in some battalion commander's conference room. But we're sitting there passing all these messages saying the 47GTD is getting ready to invade. At the time Ronnie the Warmonger was president. One message that accidentally wound up on his desk would have probably started a war. The other reason is if while all this simulated combat was going on the 47th GTD really did this, how could you convince the Army that the REAL 47GTD move wasn't the notional one? So you reserved true unit designators for true units. My opinion here is, they need to find whoever it was decided to play notional bullshit with TUDs of terrorist cells and throw him in jail.

Next we have the 8.6 PDB--the one where the community told Bush Osama was getting ready to stir up some shit. The FAA has some sort of messaging system to talk to all the airlines, right? Is there any possible way they could have written an email that says "we think there's going to be a terror incident, this is what a terrorist looks like, if you see someone like this please don't let them on the plane."

[PacerLJ35]

24. It's not quite as seamless as you make it out to be

The FAA prior to 9/11 wasn't really in the business of law enforcement. The FBI would have been. The "system" to communicate with the Airlines is more along the lines of ATC stuff, so the airline dispatchers can keep track of their airplanes via ACARS.

[jmowreader]

27. Someone passes around hijacking warnings, right?

Come on, sir...there aren't that many airlines out there and they all have telephones, email or some other system to communicate with them. They have blackberries, right? Use those.

[clixtox]

16. Too many of the "bad people" are in the USA and in control! N/T

[PacerLJ35]

8. I don't know, why is Germany still operating their Luftwaffe in the US?

I think a lot of it has to do with the NATO partnership we've held with them for over 50 years...

[Posteritatis]

9. Don't forget the brutal Canadian occupation of Colorado. (nt)

[jmowreader]

20. And even more of it has to do with training room

I guess they figure it's more politically acceptable to send their TAC guys to New Mexico than to try to learn to fly over Germany. "OMG he might crash into the Adlerhof!"

[PacerLJ35]

22. They can fly low-levels over NM a lot easier than over crowded EU airspace...

[davepc]

15. Presence of US forces means the host country dosent have to spend money on their own military

When the US puts a division/regiment/brigade/air wing or two in your borders then that's a division/regiment/brigade/air wing or two that you don't have to train, equip, and fund.

The trade off is that we get to dictate policy, or at the very least ignore their protests when we do whatever the hell we want.

The French saw what a Faustian deal it was and kicked US forces out in the 1960s.

Bill Clinton's biggest forging policy failure (IMHO) was not withdrawing from NATO and withdrawing all US personal from Europe.

The Europeans and Japanese governments don't want us to leave because they save money on their own military while the bases provide a local boost to the host regions economy.

If we left Korea that might entice North Korea to invade South Korea. It's also a useful deterrent for China invading Taiwan having a large force in Japan.

But Italy, Germany, the UK and the rest of Western Europe....no reason to have an US forces there.

The Soviet hordes are not going to pour through the Fulda Gap.

[truthisfreedom]

10. We lose a lot of Blackhawks. Makes one wonder if the design has some need of improvement.

Just sayin'.

[PacerLJ35]

11. It's a pretty solid helicopter...

Many of the accidents involve the crew using poor judgment. One of the guys in my helicopter flight school class was killed in a Black Hawk...they flew it into a mountainside in Korea, trying to maintain visual conditions.

[Blue_Tires]

12. that's my question as well

it seems like way too many of them go down in good weather on routine trips...in VA and NC it seems like there is a crash every 6 months...

[Nihil]

18. Where are the brake pedals made?

Oh, wait ... wrong thread ...

:hide:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. So we're invading Germany now too?

If Bush were president we'd all be calling for impeachment and war crimes tribunals.

So much for change, Mr. Obama.

[PacerLJ35]

25. We've had Army units in Germany as part of NATO since the end of WWII

The presence of US Army aviation assets in Germany is nothing new.