“No one was injured, everyone is safe,” is how Kerry spokesman David Wade announced the news.
Thank you, David.
If you've ever broken news to someone, potentially really bad news that ended much better than it might have, that's a really good way to do it. A really bad way is to splash the face of the person in question on one of the TV news channels with a map of the Middle East and some news crawl about an emergency helicopter landing, which is how most of us learned of the Senators' Afghanistan adventure.
Senators Kerry, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel, traveling together in the Middle East this week, made an unexpected stop in the mountains of Afghanistan yesterday when their helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing due to a snowstorm.
From the Boston Globe:
"The weather closed in on us," the Associated Press quoted Kerry as saying. "It went pretty blind, pretty fast and we were around some pretty dangerous ridges. So the pilot exercised his judgment that we were better off putting down there, and we all agreed."
Scary. But thankfully, a happy ending, if you can call an emergency landing in the mountains of Afghanistan in a snowstorm happy. What's important, as Mr. Wade notes, is that everyone is OK.
Although early accounts had phones ringing and email flying among my friends and coworkers, later reports, like the AP story and this from CNN's Brianna Keilar were much more balanced.
Video Credit: CNN
The Washington Post reported the lighter side of the story.
Kerry said the lawmakers were lucky because there happened to be a road nearby."We sat up there and traded stories," Kerry joked. "We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to do it."
Added Kerry: "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Safe journey home, Senators.
Comments (1)
Posted by john stone | February 22, 2008 4:08 PM
I am so glad that tragedy was avoided. Thank GOD!