Posted on 08/30/2007 11:15:31 PM PDT by james500
All passengers on an American Airlines overnight flight to Chicago were ordered off a plane after complaints about a group of Arabic-speaking Iraqi men who were on their way home to Detroit.
The incident forced passengers to stay overnight.
The six Iraqi passengers had been training U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton and worked for Defense Training Systems, a unit of the Alaska-based International Logistics Services Corp., said Dave Stephens, the company's chief executive officer.
"They did nothing wrong," Stephens said Wednesday. A company press release called it "an unfortunate situation for all flight passengers."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Look how brainwashed you are.
Yawn. Your comments and name calling are childish.
Whatever... Have a nice day.
I wonder why you are defending Iraqis who are so cowardly that they send Americans into danger in Iraq to do the job they should be doing.
Yeah, I know . . . whatever.
I am wondering whether you are serious or not.
Our Armed Forces are in dire need for Arab linguists and people familiar with the costums and life of people in the Middle East. Those Iraqi-Americans are doing a very important job training our troops in language skills which they need to to do their job in Iraq. How are our troops supposed to interact with locals if they can’t speak with them on a basic level? Most soldiers don’t speak Arabic, much less one of the Iraqi dialects.
Those aren’t fighting jobs. Language trainers aren’t easily replaced, as you insinuate. You’re comment to replace six Iraqi language-trainers with six American combat troops is totally senseless. Are American combat troops supposed to train fellow troops in Arabic and Iraqi costums? Doesn’t make sense. Also we have no clue how old those six Iraqi-Americans are and whether they are physically fit to serve in combat roles.
...and no those six Iraqis aren’t cowards. They apparently are doing more for our cause and our troops than the vast majority of Americans.
Just before my son went to Iraq, he trained at Twentynine Palms/Camp Pendleton with Iraqis. They had realistic Iraqi cities built there and the Marines did house to house fighting/searches, very intense, with the Iraqis playing the terrorists role.
It was very good training and real helpful for the Marines that are going over there. These Iraqis are helping our Country (and theirs).
My son made it back home safely from his tour a few months ago. That training really is worthwhile. Hope you can understand what I am trying to say....not very good with writing what I mean to say!!!!
Then they should have "avoided the appearance of impropriety" by speaking English and acting in a way to avoid suspicion. I agree with another poster who said some Middle Easterners seem to get off on tweaking us.
You are right - how dare they speak arabian - this IS suspicious.
I’d further advice on not letting anyone in an airplane with black hair.
“They can be good in Iraq where their homes should be.”
What the heck is your problem?! So immigrants can’t make their homes here anymore?
Now I agree that islam is an evil death cult, but there’s nothing in the article to suggest that they’re muzzie. There are Iraqi Christians, you know? Even if they are muzzies, I met a few who were decent folk in spite of their (rather loose) adherence to the mohammedan cult.
I’m kinda surprised that passengers would get jumpy in California, though. Who knows, maybe they made hostile gestures or something. But, I’d wait to hear more before making ridiculous comments like they should move back “home” to Iraq.
Thanks for being a voice of reason here.
Seems to me these guys are going out of their way (I’m sure they are well paid, though) to help prepare our soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines, etc. for the situations that they’ll face over there. They could have just as easily just sat on their bums and did nothing, and they’d be perfectly within their rights to do that.
IIRC, the IA is having little trouble meeting its recruiting goals. I didn’t know that the folk in question were Americans, but even if they weren’t, the services they’re providing are far more useful than serving as twelve more boots on the ground in Iraq doing “the job they should be doing.”
Isn't this flight OJ Simpson took after he did some beheading?
You guess??
Where does it say they're Americans? If you can answer the above, why are they identified as Iraqis?
And I dont know how you see things, but hyphinated Americans are playing games with their allegiance.
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." - Pres Theodore Roosevelt
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.” - Pres Theodore Roosevelt
Great Quote. I’m going to steal it for my tagline! It can’t be repeated enough.
Excellent comment, donna.
Read the other articles on this incident. They are indentified as Iraqi-Americans from Detroit. Since the vast majority of Americans from Iraq came here after 1991 I suspect that’s the case with them aswell.
I see no reason to doubt the patriotism of those six Iraqi-Americans. They assist our troops on important issues. Nowhere is it BTW said whether they are Muslims or Christians or anything else.
Americans hyphenated is to me a way to identify the background of Americans (whether Irish, German, Italian, Arab or whatever). It doesn’t have to mean double citizenship or double allegiance, while it admittedly can.
Please be so kind and show me what those six guys have done that leads you to question their allegiance. They train our Marines. Sounds good to me. There isn’t anything else we know about them.
That's more than most Americans can do.
The only ones learning arabic are the money grubbing ones who worship dollars, including the indians in Alaska "running" this school.
This "training", whatever it is, could be held either in Alaska or offshore.
Most American will never learn arabic, just like most never learned Russian in the last 60 years.
Just saying.
I have not seen a single official statement to that effect.
Do you have a source? Or just enjoy making stuff up?
Even if they were training our troops, they must know that people's sensitivities will be heightened as we approach 9/11/07. Speaking Arabic on an airplane full of English-speaking Americans is bound to cause concern.
Is it really too much to ask English-capable people to speak English for the few hours that they're on the plane with strangers?
-PJ
With all due respect, please shut up.
These particular Iraqis -- probably these very ones -- were part of the group that helped train a young Marine I know, who was recently deployed to Iraq.
I don't have any problem with having well-trained Marines who are prepared for the conditions they'll encounter. Do you?
You didn’t answer the question So I’ll ask again:
Where does it say they’re American citizens?
The article stated they were Iraqis.
You making it up as you go or do you have any facts?
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/08/passenger-freak.html
“We are good people, not a bad people,” Dave Alwatan, an Iraqi-American, tells a Chicago TV station. “How can we be bad if we are helping our people here — American people? Why are we getting treated like that?””
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