ummm... i hate to be picky... but last i hear, there were 4 downed american choppers. now, i don't want to be a buzz kill for the MSM during their celebration of enemy accomplishments... but exactly how does 4 kills equal a 'soaring' loss of choppers?
The MSM is intent to stoke the anti-war fire by whatever word-smithing they can.
If one helicopter was previously downed, and the second was downed later, the loss of the second would appear in the headlines as "100% increase in helicopter losses occurs".
They trumpet the death toll daily, and fail to acknowlege that in war, there will be casualties. Had the NY Times existed in this mode during the civil war, how would they have head-lined the 100's of thousands of deaths? Would they have had the Congress majority screaming for an end to bloodshed or for the Union to "cut and run"? Would we still be an English colony or speaking German if the "diplomacy" crowd had control during other wars?
This aiding and abetting of the enemy in wartime is sickening.....
Exactly. The last paragraph in the article sums it up well.
The helicopter "is a vulnerable platform that by definition flies low and slow, and with that comes casualties," said Daniel Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Washington defense think tank. "But after flying millions of miles in Iraq, the casualty rate for helicopters is extraordinarily low. I'd hazard a guess that it's safer flying a helicopter in Iraq than driving on the streets of Washington."
I hate to see us lose a single aircraft and crew but this is combat and the enemy has a vote until the enemy is destroyed.