Missing Soldiers
A claim has been made on an internet site that the terrorists in Iraq kidnapped the two missing American Soldiers. US forces have organized a massive search operation to try to locate the two.
"Your brothers in the military wing of the Mujahedeen Shura Council kidnapped the two American soldiers near Youssifiya," the group said in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site.
The Web site did not name the soldiers.
The soldiers were reported missing Friday after insurgents attacked a checkpoint. The Defense Department identified the missing men as Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore.
The U.S. military said Monday that seven American troops have been wounded, three insurgents have been killed and 34 detained during an intensive search for the soldiers.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles and dive teams had been deployed to find the two men. They went missing Friday during an attack on their checkpoint in the volatile Sunni area south of Baghdad that left one of their comrades dead.
"We have surged intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms and employed planes, boats, helicopters and UAVs to ensure the most thorough search possible on the ground, in the air and in the water," Caldwell said in a statement issued Monday.
Caldwell said more than 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops were participating in the search.
When I talked to my son yesterday, he assured me that the already strict radio check procedures his company uses have been toughened further. They are doing their best to make sure this doesn't happen again.
The terrorists would be well advised to release the men if they do have them. They really don't understand Americans at all.
UPDATE: Others: Blogs Of War, Confederate Yankee, Gateway Pundit, Hot Air
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Flopping Aces » Blog Archive » US Troops Taken Hostage — June 19, 2006 @ 10:16 am
By Roland Hesz, June 19, 2006 @ 8:53 am
Noone understands noone.
I keep up my opininion that it will be a long and bloody conflict, not likely to end soon.
The terrorist don’t understand americans.
The americans don’t understand terrorists.
They won’t stop even if they are killed. They believe in their cause like the americans belive in theirs.
I wouldn’t bet on who will give it up sooner.
I just wish this whole madness would stop soon. But it won’t…
By Donna, June 19, 2006 @ 11:57 am
My heart is in my stomach over this. And God forgive me, but I am so distressed at the Bush team for allowing America’s good name to be dragged through the mud by our mistreatment of Muslim prisoners………I keep thinking that the Muslims will visit upon these two young soldiers the revenge that should be visited upon John Loo, Stephen Hadley and the other unChristian ones who thought themselves so brilliant to set aside America’s moral code.
Don’t just tell me that ‘we are civilized’ in comparison to terrorists. That is true but never, ever justifies us to be abusive in God’s eyes, in Jesus’ eyes, or in the eyes of the world that used to look to us for moral leadership. If these soldiers are tortured, some folks in the Bush Administration deserve to rot in hell for their part, however small, in increasing the ugliness level of this conflict. That ‘upping the ante’, by behaving outside the Geneva Convention, is the context within which these soldiers were taken. Nothing will change that reality.
By Gaius, June 19, 2006 @ 12:19 pm
You’re conflating different issues, Donna.
By Roland Hesz, June 20, 2006 @ 1:38 am
Bush comes here – paralyzing the whole capitol, never mind, even Putin did not do that, I just hate when I am not allowed to move around in MY city -, to show the world, that US has won the Cold War, looky, we made this country free – except you did not, did not come even when you were called, never mind it
-, and thus, the US will bring democracy and freedom to Iraq as well.
-, I don’t know if Iraq would wait that long.
Well, here it took some 44 years – after selling us first to th USSR, but never you mind
So there will be a big speech, with clapping, smiling, and our politicians nodding their heads.
All the while the rest of the people watching the World Cup and cursing that they can’t get home on account of half the city being closed.
Even the ambulance and the firefighters have to make a big roundabout as the fastest routes will be closed.
Yes, it was partly off topic.
Still, I hope he won’t draw any connections between the war on Iraq and the events that passed here.
But I feel in my bones that he will.