14 US soldiers killed in Iraq

FE Team | Published: August 23, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

BAGHDAD, Aug 22 (AFP): Fourteen American soldiers were killed in northern Iraq Wednesday when their Blackhawk transport helicopter crashed during a pre-dawn flight, US command said in a statement.
"Initial indications are that the aircraft experienced a mechanical malfunction. There were no indications of hostile fire," the military said, adding that all four crew and 10 passengers died.
Two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters from Task Force Lightning, which operates in northern Iraq, were on the night mission when one of them went down, according to a statement from the unit's headquarters in Tikrit.
The latest deaths took American military losses since the US- led invasion to 3,719, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
American forces in Iraq make constant use of a huge fleet of helicopters, and are increasingly dependent on them to avoid the roadside bombs laid by insurgents and militia fighters along land routes.
The worst single US chopper crash was on November 15, 2003, when two Blackhawks collided near Mosul in northern Iraq, killing 17 soldiers.
In January and Fenruary this year there was a spate of crashes, including some shot down by an insurgent cell which deployed anti- aircraft crews north of Baghdad. US forces have since hunted down those gunners.
AFP adds from Canada: US President George W. Bush in a speech Wednesday will warn that a US withdrawal from Iraq could produce a catastrophe similar to what occurred in Southeast Asia after US forces left Vietnam.
According to excerpts from Bush's address released in advance Tuesday, the US president was to charge that an early exit from Iraq would "pull the rug out" from under US troops just as their efforts are paying off.
Bush's speech ties anti-war forces in the Vietnam era to the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the aftermath of the US pull-out, and hints at a parallel disaster in Iraq if US forces leave too soon.
"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," he was to say. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpression would be."
"In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation, torture, or execution. In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals, and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished," he was to say.
Bush was scheduled to deliver his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) group, which claims 2.3 million members, Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, for their annual convention.
US troops in Iraq "are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against Al Qaeda, clearing the terrorists out of population centres, and giving families in liberated Iraqi cities their first look at decent and normal life" according to Bush's prepared remarks.
"My answer is clear: We will support our troops, we will support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed," said Bush, who linked the painful US defeat in Vietnam to the situation in Iraq.
"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush said.
"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields,'" he said.
The US president previously drew a parallel between Vietnam and Iraq in November during a visit to Vietnam.
Bush had said that one lesson of the bloody US military defeat there a generation ago was that the United States must be patient in Iraq.
"We'll succeed unless we quit," Bush said.