The US is using AC-130 gunships over Baghdad’s Sadr City. With 2.5 million packed into 8-square miles, it’s one of the most densely populated neighborhoods on earth. You really can’t be discriminate there, especially when firing howitzers from 3000 ft in the air.
On Monday, the U.S. Air Force unleashed one of its most potent weapons, the AC-130 gunship, against Shiite extremists in Baghdad. The U.S. military said it killed at least nine militants in clashes since Sunday. The turboprop AC-130 — a variant of the C-130 Hercules transport plane — can be outfitted with Gatling guns and howtizers.
As if tanks weren’t bad enough…What is happening in Sadr City is state sanctioned murder, per usual.
There are military elements to this assault, like curtailing mortar fire on the Green Zone. But using weapons like the AC-130 are not needed at this phase. We do not have enough troops in Iraq to secure Sadr City. Minimize killing civilian populations, please. Nothing is ending soon.
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May 5th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
The action of using AC-130U Spooky gunships in the limits of populated areas in Iraq and elsewhere is an action of calling for extremely precise, direct firepower. The AC-130U has the most advanced weapon’s software and the most extensive lines of software code of any aircraft on the planet — more than the space shuttle. The AC-130U uses those computer programs to precisely attack — within 36 inches — a specific and discriminate target with a range of weapons including the 25mm, 40mm, and 105mm howitzer, all of which are extremely accurate. The AC-130U is used mostly to protect elite U.S. special operations forces in combat, and provide surgical firepower in a danger-close manner in relation special forces. The AC-130 was used in Sadr City recently as an alternate to a guided bomb from an F-16, F-15, or B-1 bomber, which would have most likely caused mass collateral damage.
The AC-130U is always, ALWAYS used as a tool to lessen collateral damage while protecting allied troops. That is why it is being used in Iraq, that is why the collateral damage is so low, and that is why the enemy neutralization is so effective.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Mr. Drew seems to know a lot about the AC-130U, and maybe it is the most precise weapon for us to be using… But I have to ask if anyone really thinks collateral damage is low in Iraq. Is it really? We blew up a fucking hospital this week didn’t we? What scale do we measure collateral damage at, to reach the conclusion that it is low? At the lowest estimate possible, Iraqi civilians have died at around 15x that of U.S. troops… I’m not saying more of ours should be dying, but I think we can do better at keeping the people we are “liberating” alive before we claim to be inflicting low collateral damage.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Yay, Drew! God bless you for what must be obvious service for our great country and for clarifying the ignorance posted previously.
God bless and protect our American and Iraqi heroes!
May 6th, 2008 at 2:52 am
“Collateral damage”…such a nice human term to use for kids killed walking to school, mother’s killed shopping in markets, etc.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
–and these are LOW estimates. But I guess death ain’t nothing but a number.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:23 am
Exactly Jeff, exactly. God bless murder as long as you give it a fancy technological term.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:18 am
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