The Good:
House moves to honor Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of black American fighter pilots, will receive the Congressional Gold Medal under a bill passed in the House on Tuesday.
The bill, which passed 400-0, would be the airmen's second congressional recognition. Both chambers passed a resolution honoring the pilots last year.
"They have fought not really just for black folks. They fought for a better America. They fought for a better world," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the sponsor of the bill. "They were pioneers not only in fighting the war but showing and giving self-esteem to so many younger people."
I have a personal connection to the Tuskegee Airmen and wrote about them last October:
The most remarkable thing about the Tuskegee Airmen has nothing to do with their color and everything to do with their abilities. In WWII, when bombers were involved in raids on particularly well defended targets, they would get a fighter escort. The Tuskegee Airmen were among the air wings that would fly fighter escort for B-24 bombing missions. When the crew of the B-24's recognized their escort were the Tuskegee Airmen, they always relaxed. The WaPo article makes it obvious why this should have been so:
Eventually, the black airmen flew escort for bombers. They were credited with shooting down more than 100 enemy aircraft and never losing an American bomber under escort to enemy fighters. [Emphasis mine-SW] In all, 992 pilots were trained in Tuskegee from 1940 to 1946. About 450 deployed overseas and 150 lost their lives in training or combat.
You will have to go to the original post to find out my connection to the Airmen.
The Bad:
'Mossad, CIA Responsible for Samarra Blast'
Iran's leaders say that Americans and Israelis were the only people to benefit from the attacks on the Samarra Mosque's Golden Dome. How did they benefit? According to this article from Iran's Tehran Times, the 'occupation forces' benefit because the resulting Muslim disunity will 'provoke civil war in Muslim countries,' prolonging America's presence in Iraq.
If the Iranians were my patient, I could give them anti-psychotic medication and help them deal with their misery so they would have less need for anti-Semitic paranoid delusions to compensate for their own short-comings; unfortunately, that is not an option. Sadly, when a paranoid has a weapon and is threatening to kill his imagined enemies, the police often have no choice but to shoot him.
& The Ugly:
Europe objects to El Al's anti-missile shield
El Al passenger planes will be barred from landing in some European countries because they have been equipped with defense systems against shoulder-held missiles, German newspaper Der Spiegel reported.
The Swiss aviation authority has already barred El Al aircrafts equipped with the new system from landing in the country, and the German paper said more countries are expected to soon follow.
"If we catch Israeli planes fitted with this system in our airports, they will be grounded," a spokesman for the Swiss aviation authority told Der Spiegel.
The "Flight Guard" defense system is a military system that has been modified to fit civilian aircraft.
This battle-proven system is capable of detecting an approaching missile, warning the crew and automatically activating countermeasures in the form of flares that will divert the missile from its course.
Let me get this straight. There are thousands of shoulder launched anti-air craft missiles afloat in the world. Terrorists have already tried to take down an El Al passenger plane (Kenya) and the Swiss won't allow any El Al plane equipped with missile defense systems form landing in their country. Are there any people in the world more amoral than the Swiss?
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