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Time for a pity party I spotted this in a Jane’s newsletter:
“Crash wipes out IRGC ground forces leadership”. A civil-registered Dassault Falcon 20E VIP business jet operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) crashed on 9 January killing the crew and much of the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Forces. [Jane’s Defence Weekly- first posted to http://jdw.janes.com, 13 January 2006]
I feel soooo bad!
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Gloating about someone’s dead always leaves me with an upset stomach…But hell, in this case i’ll just take a couple of Rennie tablets.
If it was not accidental, and we will probably never know, taking that group out is a good way to prevent an attempted coup or settle some type of rivalry between the Rev Guards and the regular forces.
Reminiscent of the “Night of the Long Knives” when the leadership of the SA was eliminated to placate the regular army and clear the way for the SS.
Might control of future nukes have been the point of contention? Murky stuff.
Oh, I just feel so sick.
Is my memory faulty, or have there been about 4 “plane crashes” of this sort in Iran in the last 2 years?
Don’t mind another one with their president and his cabinet aboard.
Not a place to start up a Frequent Flyer points program then?
Is my memory faulty, or have there been about 4 “plane crashes” of this sort in Iran in the last 2 years?
Yeah, apparently the US sanctions on Iran are preventing them from importing Russian aeroplane parts. Or something.
Well, one should never attribute to malice what can be explained by French engineering. 🙂
Didn’t Chirac just give them a verbal warning as well?
As Bugs Bunny might say
“Dassault Folks!”
I’ll get me coat…
What a waste of a fine aircraft. It will be missed.
Didn’t this happen about three weeks ago? I’m guessing the leadership were not exactly military geniuses, I expect this will change little.
Should we send a wreath?
Some men’s deaths diminish us less than others.
I hope the crash didn’t harm any innocent wildlife.
Is this an “aww, diddums” moment?
Chris Harper – Have you understood the comments on this thread?
Verity,
Of course. My comment was not directed at the commentators, but was an indication of the level of sympathy I feel for the Iranians.
My apologies if it was taken any other way.
It’s only January and Guido might have won the “worst pun of 2006” already. Gonna take a real beauty to beat that one.
Almost as murky as Rudolph Hess’s appointments in Scotland.
“Well, one should never attribute to malice what can be explained by French engineering. :)”
Amen to that!
Those plastic tailfins are a fine example:
Oops,
Here’s the link:
http://tinyurl.com/dpbrv
French engineering is rather superb. Take a look at some pictures of that bridge at Millau. Take a ride of the TVG.
Lets bash the French by all means. But the insults should have a basis in truth. (They have watched us equally keenly over the last thousand years, too, by the way, and bash us back with equal malice.)
Here’s the viaduct at Millau. (Link)
Take a look at some pictures of that bridge at Millau.
Mm. Impressive engineering, but what necessitated a bridge at that location?
The wikipedia entry states that the previous arrangement resulted in road congestion at the end of the holiday season, which doesn’t seem like a problem worth spending €394 million to solve. I was under the impression that most people in France used the TGV when travelling long distances….
rosignol – Actually, with French driving, it cuts about two hours off the journey, which was a hellacious, highly congested, narrow-laned hilly road with endless jams.
No, unless they’re going to a major city with a station, like Montpellier, they drive. Because otherwise, how would they get around once in France Profonde? The TGV is excellent, but it’s a city to city deal.
In the current scale of things, I don’t think 394m euros is that much to spend. The French government wants people to travel to the south because it’s poor and they want their citizens buying holiday homes there, and Brits buying holiday homes there, and people going there for family vacations to bring money to the region.
Other than that it cannot be pleasant for the little ancient villages with this overshadowing them, I think this will be successful in bringing money into the south. Of interest to those like me who cannot, under any circumstances, drive across a long bridge, they put the sidings up above eye level so people can’t see how high up they are. It’s higher than the Eiffel Tower after all!
French engineering is rather superb. Take a look at some pictures of that bridge at Millau. Take a ride of the TVG.
Perhaps you have heard of an aircraft carrier named the Charles de Gaulle?
ATM – Obviously, this is an allusion which is supposed to be a triumphant trump point, but no. I haven’t. But the Millau viaduct works in speeding people down to the south and home again. Before, people wouldn’t even think of coming down to their own holiday homes on long weekends because of the endless, horrendous congestion. Now, they do. It was a good move by the French government. Why can’t people criticise the French government on things they do wrong – almost everything – instead of on the grands projets they do right?
You people who hate France blindly lose your own arguments. France and her culture and her thinkers have been a powerful influence on Western civilisation for centuries. This is a fact. The tragedy is that she is now pissing it away in the service of accommodating an alien culture. That is what is so bizarre. And it’s intentional. That’s even worse.
Well, on the other hand maybe the Republican Guard, having seen what happened to their counterparts in Iraq, was not very keen on the current nutter-President, and the current nutter-President really needed those guys dead more than he needed them challenging him. Just a thought.
As to the loss of the plane: well, they’ll lose the lot of them if they push it too far. The USAF vs Iran AF would be one-sided battle, effectively over in about the time it take an F-15 to traverse the place on cruise control.
Re the Bridge. Yep. It looks great. The French spend a lot of money on state sponsored taxpayer-extorted overspending in the name of, I guess, Beauty in Public Works. Look no further than the expensive art and gardening in the middle of all those roundpoints. If such a project can be phaoronic, all the better. Put the phallic-gallic TGV on top of it and its froggy public works orgasm.
In possibly related news- Ahmadinejad Cancels Visit Before Bomb Blasts Hit Southern Iran
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/ahmadinejad-cancels-visit-before-bomb.html
Verity: so when you drive on it you cannot enjoy the view through the window?