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C-130 carrying lawmakers dodges missiles

WASHINGTON — A military cargo plane carrying three senators and a congressman was forced to take evasive maneuvers and dispatch flares to avoid ground fire after taking off from Baghdad.

The lawmakers said their plane, a C-130, was under fire Thursday night from three rocket-propelled grenades over the course of several minutes as they left for Amman, Jordan.

“The crew did a tremendous job in evading the missiles,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. “It brings home to us what our troops are going through every day in harm’s way.”

Sens. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., were also on the plane.

Cramer and Martinez said they had just begun to relax about five or 10 minutes after the plane took off under darkness.

Crew members apparently communicated to the pilots as they saw the initial RPG fired from the ground, Cramer said. After the first burst, the pilots maneuvered aggressively and set off flares used for drawing incoming fire away from aircraft.

Once the flares lit up the sky, lawmakers said, two more RPGs were fired as the pilots continued maneuvering.

Martinez said he quickly put back on his body armor.

"We were jostled around pretty good," said Cramer, who estimated the plane had ascended to about 6,000 feet. "There were a few minutes there where I wondered: 'Have we been hit? Are we OK?"'

Capt. Angel Wallace, a spokeswoman for U.S. Central Command, said she was not aware of the incident, and military public affairs officials in Baghdad could not be reached immediately.

Lawmakers travel to Iraq regularly to get a closer look at military and political progress there, usually staying inside Baghdad's secured Green Zone and traveling under heavy security.

Shelby said he expects the military to start bringing troops back in the next six to eight months.

“They have made a lot of progress from the surge,” he said by phone from Amman. “It’s not definitive, but it’s on the right track. The question is, will this Iraqi government step up and meet its responsibility as far as police and troops is concerned?” Shelby said.

Shelby didn’t endorse any specific timetable for troop withdrawal.

“We all know we’re going to be leaving Iraq,” Shelby said. “We don’t know when.”

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said after returning from a recent trip to Iraq that he supported withdrawing 5,000 troops by Christmas.