Word: choppering
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Bumblebees defy the physics of flight, helicopter pilots like to say - and so it seems do the whirlybirds flying, and too often crashing, in Iraq recently. The crash of a Marine Sea Knight chopper northwest of Baghdad on Wednesday - killing all seven aboard - marks the fourth time a U.S. military helicopter has gone down in Iraq in just more than two weeks (an additional downing was of a U.S. contractor's chopper). Like clockwork, al-Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgents quickly claimed responsibility for Wednesday's downing, which brought to 28 the number of helicopter fatalities in the five crashes...
...himself, and that's where Democrats say he stumbled. I'm not sure this criticism is realistic: Crashing the chain of command is not a trait where the Army has ever scored high in its promotion boards. And Casey, an Army brat whose dad died in a chopper crash in Vietnam, is a product of the service that created him; neither of his bosses, Gen. John Abizaid or outgoing chief Gen. John Schoonmaker, were exactly big truth-tellers when it came to talking to Congress...
...siege. Rice had planned to fly to Jerusalem, but she diverted to Cyprus at about noon local time, boarded a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter manned by the U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit 24, the same unit that was the target of the Marine barracks bombing in 1983. Rice's chopper, armed with tripod-mounted machine guns, landed on U.S. embassy grounds in Beirut at about 1 p.m. local time. She was driven in an armored SUV to the office of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Afterwards, another fast, bumpy ride took her to the home of the speaker...
...fighting was vicious. One of Jim's Apaches was brought down by enemy fire; both pilots were too badly injured to get out, and the chopper was likely to explode. Unable to land nearby, Jim had his helicopter hover over the crash site. He then jumped to the ground, injuring his back but not badly enough to prevent him from pulling both pilots from the downed helicopter and staying with them until a medical evacuation team arrived...
...lite Army rescue unit, through Iranian airspace to a makeshift desert landing strip in Iran. Then they would be trucked into Tehran, where they would somehow fight their way into the embassy compound and out of it again with the hostages in tow. Instead, a Delta Force chopper collided on the runway with a C-130 transport plane that had 44 Delta troops inside, and eight soldiers died in the fireball. When word of the failed mission reached the White House, notes Bowden, Hamilton Jordan, Carter's chief of staff, "ducked into the president's bathroom and vomited...