[natehale1971]

On 22 November 2003, shortly after takeoff from Baghdad, Iraq, an Airbus A300 cargo plane owned by European Air Transport ("DHL") was struck on the left wing tip by a surface-to-air missile. Severe wing damage resulted in a fire and complete loss of hydraulic flight control systems. Because outboard left wing fuel tank 1A was full at takeoff, there was no fuel-air vapour explosion. Liquid jet fuel dropped away as 1A disintegrated. Inboard fuel tank 1 was pierced and leaking.

Returning to Baghdad, the 3-man crew made an injury-free landing of the crippled aircraft, using differential engine thrust as the only pilot input. This is despite major damage to a wing, total loss of hydraulic control, a faster than safe landing speed and a ground path which veered off the runway surface and onto unprepared ground.

Paris Match Reporter Claudine Vernier-Palliez accompanied a Fedayeen commando unit on their strike mission against the DHL aircraft.

Sara Daniel, a French weekly newsmagazine journalist claimed receipt, from an unknown source, of a video that showed insurgents, faces concealed, firing a missile at the A300. Daniel was researching a feature about Iraqi resistance groups but she disclaimed any specific knowledge of the people who carried out the attack, despite being present at the moment of attack.

Now that happened in Baghdad... the plane was able to land safely, but it showed that something like this could actually happen. Now in Baghdad International Airport, they have all kinds of close guards that are suppose to protect against such kind of attack.

Now I don't usually agree with Sen. Boxer (D-CA), but she's had a few ideas inspired moments of clarity that i have supported in the past. She's been wanting the US government to spend the money to get countermeasures for SAM missiles installed on all international flights. And she's been asking for this since 2001 or so. And it's an idea that COULD have been adopted in Twilight 2000 prior to air travel being suspsended during the build-up to the Twilight War (no matter what timeline or version you want to use).

Me, i'm not worried and wringing my hands.

I'm looking at all the crap that is happening around the world, and the fact that people who tried to warn others that this was coming were called crazy, bigoits and just plan evil... when someone calls out about something, and has a history of having been accurate about what they've been saying. You should at least listen to what they are saying, and investigate what they are trying to warn you against. I did that when people were screaming against the Patriot Act. I did it when people were saying we were creating a police state in 2002.. but am worried when worse programs are being implimented today, but are being ignored.

Me... I'm worried about the fact that Mustard Gas can be used in deeply compact and high population areas (NYC). Using it as an area denial area IS something I worry about, but not the kind of thing I'm thinking it would be used on. My fear for Chemical and Bio Weapons has always been aimed at their use to attack commuters in Subways.

I wrote a paper on that when i was in the Navy and gave it in to my CO who read it, liked it and sent it up the pipeline, and he told me that ten page paper had triggered another Pentagon study on what would happen if someone was to use chem or bio weapons in the NYC subway system on a Friday afternoon. I ended up getting another letter of commendation in my service jacket out of it (my second one, the first was from having done such a good job of organizing the CBR warfare team onboard the ship, the thrid was from the work I was doing during the refurbishment of the berthing spaces of the Ike, and the fourth I got was when i modernized the VF-43 "Chanllengers" patch... and now you know why people are beyond confused about me having an RE-4 code on my DD214 when i got out of the navy).

And just about ANYONE can make chemical weapons, if you research it... you can find the instructions on how to make the stuff here on the internet. Hell, there are people who have actually put the directions and plans for chemical weapons and improvised munitions ONLINE. And they did it because they felt that EVERYONE should have that knowledge. Now I'm someone who feels that things like that SHOULD be availiable to adults, but I don't think that children should be able to get their hands on it.

Especially since I have read about local police recently stopped a bombing attack on a school here in the US, and the kid who was going to do it had gotten the all the directions form the internet.

There is so much out there that can be used by evil people for evil ends... but we can't solve the problems of this by just taking all that down and getting rid of it. We can only slove those problems by dealing with the source.

The darkness that resides in our own souls.

And until we can deal with that darkness, all we can do... is prepare for the worse and hope (and pray) for the best.

I started this thread to let everyone know a news story that I had saw that just bothered me when I read it. The NUMBERS of the SAMs that had been taken just really bothered me. And I believe that knowlege is power... and that by letting everyone here know about this would get people to talk and think.

And it's been making me think, ALOT.

A situtation like that of Twilight 2000 (v1, v2, v2.2 and v3) is something that could have actually happen in our lives. It was speculative fiction before it became alternate history. AND if everyone thinks about it, this hasn't been the first time in our history that things have been alot like this. The Cuban Missile Crisis, Able Archer in 1983 almost provoked the Soviets to attack, the incident that the Soviets almost fired their missiles at us because of a screwy early warning system... and others that we just don't know about yet.

And Twilight 2000 showed us how our world could have devolved into a horrible, horrible outcome by people making worse choices than they did in real life. And while some of those choices are what caused many of these problems today (Afghanistan), they didn't lead to a nuclear exchange that brought about mutually assured distruction. But today we're dealig with the problems that had been created to keep the world from another major conventional war... mutually assured ecconomical destruction.

Today's world has so much going on, the ecconomy is in such a recession that people are too scared to officially call it a depression that has triggered nations that are in so much debt they are about to collapsed in upon the weight of the excessive progressive social programs they had been giving to their citezens for decades without though of how they would keep paying for them in tough ecconomic times.

And then there are revolutions and wars that breaking out all across the middle east... that are making things worse because it's hampering oil production (which makes me angry that we aren't drilling for our own oil reserves that makes what is in the middle east look like a drop in the bucket, i mean... the RUSSIANS are drilling for their oil and their ecnomy has been improving).

Twilght 2013 COULD have used all this to have created v3 of Twilight 2000, because many of the problems we've got going on today had been warned about back in the 1990s, but the War on Terror ended up taking over the minds of the world. It became so distracting that it was all anyone could think of or talk about.

In the past week I have read of the rapid increase of racially motivated attacks in the United States and the United Kingdom, where there are gangs of black (and hispanic) men have attacked whites, but the mainstream national media hasn't picked up these local stories to broadcast them to the rest of the nation.

This troubles me because I just don't understand racism. I can't see how anyone can just hate someone because of the color of their skin. How a group of people can come together and kick in someone's front door and attack them, JUST BECAUSE they are a different skin color. But it's happening, and I don't know what to say or do about it.

I gues what i'm saying is... the old Chinese Curse of "may you live in interesting times" is something that happens EVERY generation (face it everyone, in 1989 we could have ended up with a USSR deciding to go down fighting instead of just breaking up with a whimper). Because every generation has crisises that will come and test them... it's how we deal with these crisies that tests us, and shows just what we are made of.

And I hope, and pray that we come out of all this... just as have those that have come before. Because that's how you build character and dignity. Is by coming through these kinds of things without allowing the darker and more base instincts from coming out. And I am hoping that I'm not the only one who is hoping (and praying) for this here on this forum... it's why i shared all this with you.