...it's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there...
From the Bee:
A reserve Placer County sheriff's deputy was among five U.S. security contractors killed after their company's helicopter crashed in central Baghdad this week.Art Laguna, 52, was working for the private security firm Blackwater USA when he was killed Tuesday.
Two Sunni insurgent groups claimed responsibility. One posted several identity cards on a Web site, including two belonging to Laguna.
Sell It YourselfLaguna lived in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova and was a reserve deputy with the Placer County Sheriff's Department.
He helped establish the department's air wing in 1995 and spent hundreds of hours volunteering to train the department's pilots. He also assisted with rescues in the Sierra Nevada, said Capt. David Harris, who commands the air unit.
"We'll definitely miss his expertise, we'll miss his flying abilities, and of course we'll miss him as a friend," Harris told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "He was a wonderful guy."
Laguna began assisting the sheriff's department while he was flying Black Hawk helicopters on medical evacuation missions with the California National Guard out of Sacramento's Mather Field. He worked with the department for nine years and visited when he was in the U.S, Harris said.
The circumstances of the helicopter crash in Baghdad remained unclear Wednesday. The Black Hawk was headed to help a U.S. Embassy ground convoy and was flying over a raging gunfight in a Sunni neighborhood at the time it went down.
An Iraqi military official said it was downed by a machine gun, but a U.S. military official in Washington said there was no indication of that. A U.S. defense official said four of the five people on board the helicopter were shot execution-style, in the back of the head.
Yes, but do the Guantanamo prisoners have Korans?
Posted by: Casca on Jan. 25, 2007And, are they being handled reveretly, with clean, white gloves?
We need ot be respectful of their "human rights", you know.
Posted by: shelly on Jan. 25, 2007Yes we do Shelly 'cause we are the good guy's, proud of our constitution and those who shred it as they shit their pants in fear, you and Kasha among them.
No pity for greedy assholes willing to put their lives at risk for love of money. I hope later in life their children come to understand how little their father valued them.
Posted by: strawman on Jan. 25, 2007"No pity for greedy assholes willing to put their lives at risk for love of money."
You have no fucking idea his motivation, Straw! Do you have any shame?! I would never asked Annie to censor somebody, but this sort of comment ought to come damn close to getting you banned. If you said that crap in front of me, sir, I knock your fucking ass out.
Maybe you ought to send that little bit of wisdom above to his wife and children. I know, though, that you wouldn't. It's easy to sit and type away with a sense of false bravado when you don't have to look somebody in the eye.
You've made a lot of outrageous comments, but this is totally out-of-line; totally shameless; and totally gutless. You wonder why people on this site show you so little respect? (And, the truth is, Straw, I usually try to show you some respect because it seems you at least believe what you write despite the fact it may seem luny to me.)
Posted by: blu on Jan. 27, 2007We've already heard that from somewhere before, Blu.
Posted by: reagan80 on Jan. 27, 2007I did not meet Art Laguna, but I did meet his son. He married my cousin.
Posted by: Indigo Red on Jan. 27, 2007Please Blu,
I strongly believe that nobody should die in IRAQ and that every death is a tragedy. Iraq is as I have said one thousdand times before an immoral, illegal, militeristic adventure concocted by a cabal of war criminals in washington that I would enjoy seeing hung with a long drop so that their heads might detach.
This pilot deserved to live, he deserved to see his children grow old and hold his grandchildren in his lap. He made a choice. He gets to live and die by that choice. Who or what ordered Mr. Laguna to go over there and work security for Blackwater? His wife? His kids? His mother? His bank account? My guess, and this is as you say only a guess, is his bank account. My previous remarks, which I have made before, about the deaths of mercenaries are always driven by sadness first than anger at the useless and preventable loss caused by greed or vaingloryious hubris disguised as patriotism. Art committed a kind of sucicide and he spun the chamber one too many times. Why mourn a man who chose death, there are too many dying who would do anything to live.
Posted by: strawman on Jan. 28, 2007