Free Republic

A civilian cargo aircraft crashed at Bagram Air Field near the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday, killing all seven people aboard. The plane came down shortly after take-off and crashed within the boundaries of the US-run airbase, a NATO spokesperson at the base said. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the crash, but the coalition dismissed the claim as "false" in a statement to AP. The cause of the crash is being investigated by emergency crews, but no sign of insurgent activity in the area was spotted at the time, the statement added.

A US federal appeals court has denied a bid by Presidential Airways, a subsidiary of the US military's embattled private security contractor, Blackwater International, to throw out a civil suit brought by the wives of three Army officials killed in the December 2004 crash of a Presidential EADS Casa C-212-CC in a box canyon in Afghanistan. Blackwater claimed to have immunity from civil lawsuits, in part because the company was doing work for the US government. The company has been the focus of intense US congressional oversight after allegations of unprovoked shootings by its security operatives in Iraq. The ruling...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A 2004 crash that killed everyone on board -- three crew members and three U.S. troops -- was caused by pilots from a Blackwater plane taking a low-level run through a mountain canyon in Afghanistan, testimony revealed Tuesday. "I swear to God, they wouldn't pay me if they knew how much fun this was," the doomed plane's cockpit voice recorder captured the pilot saying shortly before the November 27, 2004, crash. The account of the crash emerged during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Blackwater's performance in Iraq and Afghanistan. In its November 2006...