Archives » Tuesday, February 19, 2008
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Larry Kaplow
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Feb 19, 2008 02:58 PM
It's dust storm season in Iraq and the unruly weather is knotting up
the vital helicopter travel in ways that rival the effects snows have
on North American commercial aviation. Over the past week there has often
been an ugly slate sheen on the skies, with low-visibility, winds that
whip the palms around and the fine sand that leaves cars, windows and
plants with a thin coat of beige. You can smell and taste the dirt,
even inside.
True, in Iraq they don't make you sit for hours
in your helicopter waiting for take off like a big airliner might, but
things can get inconvenient or even interfere with military operations.
It was five years ago during the invasion that the march of U.S. troops
toward Baghdad was briefly suspended for dust storms. Tonight we can
tell from the unusual silence around the capital that the helicopters
that support troops on the ground have been grounded for hours.
One
of the similarities between interruptions in helicopter travel here and
airline travel in the United States is that passengers rarely know
what's going on--though it seems somewhat more excusable in a war.
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