Congressmen Chicken Out on Baghdad Trip

[thedrifter]

Congressmen Chicken Out on Baghdad Trip
By M.E. SPRENGELMEYER
Scripps Howard News Service
Nov 17, 2003, 19:01


Security concerns forced a congressional delegation to scrap a planned flight into Baghdad on Monday after an earlier flight into the Iraqi capital was targeted by surface-to-air missiles, a Colorado congressman said.

An eight-member delegation was supposed to wrap up its three-day trip to the Middle East on Monday by flying from Kuwait to Baghdad to meet with a U.S. military commander and then visit local schools, said Republican Rep. Bob Beauprez.

When members awoke at a Kuwait City hotel Monday, they were informed that the trip had been canceled because of an incident about six hours earlier, when two surface-to-air missiles were fired at a C-130 transport plane on its approach to Baghdad, Beauprez said.

The missiles apparently missed their target, but not before the C-130 was forced to take evasive action, Beauprez said.

"This clearly represents an escalation," Beauprez said in a conference call with reporters while the delegation was flying home to the United States. "You've got to have pretty good organization to pull that off and have access to some pretty good weaponry. ... This isn't some street yard gang."

Coalition aircraft have come under increasing ground fire in recent weeks, including the downing of a Chinook helicopter Nov. 2 near Fallujah, which killed 16 soldiers, and another attack that brought down a Black Hawk helicopter Nov. 7 in Tikrit, killing six. The U.S. military was also investigating reports that ground fire might have contributed to a mid-air collision of two Black Hawk helicopters on Saturday in Mosul, killing 17 soldiers.

Instead of the Baghdad trip, the group remained in Kuwait and toured the command center of the Combined Forces Land Component Command at Camp Doha before beginning its return trip to the United States Monday night.

The fact-finding mission began Friday. Members hoped to learn about the progress of the United States occupation in Iraq and the attitudes of both soldiers and average Iraqis. Over the weekend, members made day trips to Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, but they were housed in neighboring Kuwait in the wake of a recent attack on a Baghdad hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other top officials had been staying.

Beauprez said the congressional delegation was never threatened but that members wore bulletproof vests and were told by U.S. commanders about the vast amount of Iraqi weapons found stashed across the country.

Already, troops near Kirkuk have found more than 3,000 weapons caches; 12 of those were larger than the biggest U.S. weapons stockpile at the troops' home base at Fort Hood, Texas, Beauprez said.

"It's no wonder where this stuff keeps coming from," Beauprez said. "They literally dig it up from the sand."

Others on the fact-finding mission included Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala.; Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla.; Steny Hoyer, D-Md.; David Hobson, R-Ohio; Michael Oxley, R-Ohio; John Tanner, D-Tenn.; Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas; a congressional staff member and a military liaison.
? Copyright 2003 by Capitol Hill Blue


http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artma...cle_3521.shtml


Sempers,

Roger