I've been following this story with some interest, and this worries me:

An Arabic television channel aired a videotape Monday purporting to show insurgents firing a missile that downed a British transport plane in Iraq, and London said 10 people were missing, believed dead.

My closest personal attachment to the war at the moment is my friend JD from high school. He flys as a Loadmaster on a C-130. He's supposedly on his last tour in the Middle East (number 7 if you can believe it) before being re-stationed stateside to do training. I hope those orders hold up. If the latest scuttlebutt about how they're dealing with troop shortages holds any water it looks like my man might get a reprieve from the front lines -- someone will need to train those desk-jockeys -- and by the looks of it not a minute too soon.

So this doesn't bode well for my friend, and it doesn't bode well for the rest of our people over there either. Whatever else you might call them, the Insurgents aren't stupid. They've been attacking suplly lines since day one, and from what I can gather, the air link -- largely supplied by C-130s -- has grown in importance as there are no truly safe truck routes in many areas. If the Insurgents have found access to a steady supply of SAMs, things are going to get much tighter over there. Here's hoping it doesn't.