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Iraq Shoots Down US Recon Robot
Baghdad (SDX) Dec 24, 2002 Iraqi aircraft and anti-aircraft artillery shot down an unmanned US drone over the south of the country, an Iraqi military spokesman said on Monday, quoted by the state INA news agency. "The sky eagles and the courageous men manning anti-aircraft artillery downed a US Predator reconnaissance aircraft which flew in from Kuwaiti airspace to violate our airspace," the spokesman said. "The US reconnaissance plane was carrying out a precise and planned mission over southern Iraq" when it was shot down, he added. US military officials earlier said that Iraqi aircraft Monday shot down a Predator reconnaissance drone in a "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq patrolled by US and British warplanes. General Gen. Richard Myers, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, when asked at a briefing at the Pentagon Dec 23, if today's action by an Iraqi aircraft to shoot down this drone, penetrating the southern no-fly zone, as an escalation of things we've been seeing in the no-fly zone with the recent firings, said he didn't. "I think we've lost two other Predators, I believe, to hostile fire in southern Iraq. They've been attempting -- they attempt to shoot down all our aircraft that fly over southern and northern Iraq in support of the U.N. Security Council resolutions. "And they got a lucky shot today and they brought down the Predator. But I don't see -- I do not see it as an escalation. It's been something they've been doing for literally the last couple of years, said Myers Initially, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told journalists at the same briefing that it was only an assumption on our part that the drone had been shot down. "It is not a fact. We do not know for sure that it was shot down.... We know we've lost communications with it," said Rumsfeld before using the latest incident to illustrate the Bush Administration's key point that while the Iraqis are saying that they are completely complying on all fronts with the U.N. resolution? "They obviously aren't. And they've been making a strenuous, energetic effort to shoot down U.S. aircraft for many, many, many months now -- manned and unmanned," said Rumsfeld. Meanwhile, Voice of America reports that top Pentagon officials are confirming the loss of an unmanned "Predator" spy plane over Iraq. The U.S. Air Force drone was apparently shot down by an Iraqi fighter plane over the southern "no-fly zone." The propeller-driven Predator was the first coalition aircraft of any sort to be brought down by Iraqi forces since U.N. Security Council resolution November 8 demanding that Iraq dismantle its weapons of mass destruction. At a Pentagon briefing, the chairman of the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Meyers said Iraq has long been trying to shoot down one of the patrol planes, and he did not see it as a military escalation relating to the U.N. resolution.
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