Bush's Disgrace

In Darfur, Terror From the Air

With Iraq and Katrina securely credited to Bush's legacy, you'd think there's a hurdle the size of the St. Louis arch to clear for 'topping' either in terms of abject failure.

Well ...

Abubakar Ibrahim Hassan, a long-faced man in a white robe and knit cap who appeared to be in his sixties, said the Antonovs flew over Bellala Gorf several times that day in July. Residents fled their huts for trees at the edge of the village.

"We knew the fire would come and kill everybody," he said.

But far more frightening are the Mi-24s. The helicopters can be outfitted with machine guns, bombs and rockets designed to blast through heavy armor. Villagers in Bellala Gorf described the Mi-24s firing munitions that left a distinctive trench-like pattern, about 10 feet long and three feet across, the signature of rockets fired from close to the ground.

Residents also described two Mi-24s painted in green camouflage. Several villagers said the helicopters hovered so low that it seemed they could have reached up and touched the aircraft.

Instead, they fled, tried to hide in the sand or cringed in their huts.

Ali Hadi Osman, 41, lay as still as he could, spread-eagle in the dust, he said, hoping the helicopter pilots would not see him. He stayed like that until long after they had flown away.

"If there's any movement," Osman reasoned, "they will come back."

"Not on my watch," huh? A measly 5,000 troops (American) on the ground two or three years ago and Sudan might very well have been an afterthought by now. Well, check that. It already is anyway.