Flying the un-friendly skies of Iraq

Chris Floyd at Empire Berlesque notes that at one time "No-Fly Zones" meant American dominance of the skies of Iraq. It is a bitter Irony that now the term means areas in which American aircraft must not fly due to the high probability of loss to the Iraqis.

...now the phrase is the sad and bloodsoaked emblem of a wretched defeat, a pointless and unnecessary gutting of American power. It now denotes those areas where American aircraft are forbidden to fly, lest they be shot down by Iraqis -- the precise opposite of the No-Fly Zones of yore.

A full four years into the war, and just shy of that mark since "Mission Accomplished" was proclaimed, the occupying power has been forced to deny its own pilots access to larger and larger swathes of Iraqi airspace -- even as the use of helicopters for troop transport and supply is growing, due to the increasingly unsafe conditions on the ground. It is the Iraqis who are now imposing "No-Fly Zones" on the "world's only superpower."

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