Drudge Report has a breaking story about a US Navy flyer who is still being held captive in Baghdad frpm the Gulf War.

Is it possible or even likely that the story could be true?

Do we even have any 'missing' Naval aviators from the Gulf War?

See article at:[url]http://www.drudgereport.com/[/url]

Eric The(Concerned)Hun[>]:)]

I haven't heard of any missing, but I wouldn't count it out as possible.

I seriously doubt it.

Did they ever recover the guy (or his remains) that was shot down early on and declared KIA without anyone ever going to the crash site, much less confirming it?

Zak, I think you're right.  I do recall the U.S. not being able to recover one plane.  I don't remember what the pilot was flying.  If it is true what Drudge or the Washington Times is reporting, I think we should open up another can on Iraq immediately.

It may be true.  Check it out:

[url]http://www.pownetwork.org/saudi/sd017.htm[/url]

This is a Jan 2001 report;
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/01/14/gulf.war.pilot.01/

Maybe the story was invented for that reason. An excuse to escalate things with Iraq.

Or it could be true.

I think it would be highly unlikely, for the simple reason he would had to have family or friends who would have gone public with this by now.

Here's the Washington Times article:

[url]ttp://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020311-40815350.htm[/url]

Eric The(IfThisIsTrue...)Hun[>]:)]

Another failure of US "intelligence". I don't recall hearing this one before. Isn't the timing of this story a bit suspicious to any one else?? If I recall the congressional hearings about the "gulf war" correctly, the US ambassador to Iraq testified the US had given Saddam the "green light" to take Kuwait. Saddam walked into the trap, and got a spanking. He still does not cooperate with the will of the NWO crowd, so must be removed....

I am truly surprised that so many of you folks have been blindsided with this.  It was on "60 Minutes" a year or two ago, and that episode was a repeat of an even earlier showing.

What it all comes down to is, we don't know what happened to the pilot.  There are indications that he survived the crash, but no evidence beyond that (from what I remember).

It is possible that he died shortly after being captured.  It is possible that he was captured alive and executed.  It is possible that he hid and died in a cave or something like that.  It is possible that he is still alive in some Iraqi dungeon.

It would be good to know, but without information beyond what little is currently known, I doubt that much more will be made of this.

Hun,

Unfortunately, this may very well be all too true.  The evidence indicates that CDR Speicher ejected from his doomed F/A-18 and parachuted safely to earth.  The widely dispersed locations of the jet canopy, the ejection seat, and the aircraft, indicate he left the plane well before it hit the ground.

As to what happened to him afterwards...one can only guess, and none of the answers are pleasant.  There is some intel from Iraqi defectors that they put the snatch on the guy right after he landed and he was quickly taken to Bagdad, where he purportedly remains today.

As a retired naval officer, my beef is with our government, especially DoD in not pursuing this more agressively.  I understand the information on his whereabouts came from several "sources" including some recent corroborative info from an Iranian POW of the Tanker War of the '80s who said he saw the "American" in the prison.

This story first began circulating during the last year of the Clinton administration.  The Navy got a black eye for declaring him KIA without a thorough investigation.

CDR Speicher has since been declared MIA, which affects his survivors greatly (They keep getting his paychecks, and he continues to be automatically promoted with his year group).  

Considering the hot issues of that day (Monica/Impeachment/Lying to everybody), this was old news fast.

Unfortunately for our guy, Bill Clinton did absolutely nothing when given the intel data a few years ago.  I figure he didn't want to risk his Nobel Peace Prize pursuit by pissing off the arabs.  

I hope Dubya and his troops will do something now.

I suspect that CDR Speicher has been the playtoy of the Iraqis for these eleven years now...scary thought.

[>(]

Of course, it would be good if the man survived.  Horrible if a captive of those vermin for so long.

If he IS a captive, total destruction of Iraq is in order.  But then, it is anyway.  More important is what needs to be done here, the "people" we need to hold responsible and punish accordingly.

Can't believe a friggin thing the gubamint tells us, can we?

Yeah, this has been rumored for years, and of course it may be possible, but why would they keep him?  I mean, exactly HOW MUCH intel could they glean from this guy that would make what would happen to them if we found out worth it?  Saddam is only concerned w/ staying in power and controlling his area of the middle east.  He knows that something like this, if true, would be just what we need to justify ending his reign.  Then again, he did think that he wouldn't have to worry about invading Kuwait - but, famously in that case, Bush Sr. & his moronic ambassador led him on into thinking that. I mean, hell, Saddam tried to clear that invasion w/ us multiple times, yet we NEVER told him NO!!!

Also, I am so sick of hearing every thing blamed on Clinton.  Yes, the guy sucked.  No, I am not a fan of his.  But some of you can't get through a single post w/out blaming life's ills on the idiot.  The guy was shot down on the 1st day of the air war during Bush Sr's tenure, w/ VP Cheney in the Def. Depmt, w/ current SOS Powell as CJCOS.  They searched the wreck site then, if they saw all this stuff why didn't Cheney's DOD classify him as MIA back then?  C'mon already, Bush Sr. was the one who originally got in into this Iraq mess, and it was his admin. who fucked up on the SAR of this pilot and then his subsequent classification. I know a lot of people don't want you to know this, but you can be Republican, AND  objective, ya know...

PS  I think it was reported that an AAM not a SAM took this plane down.

From the POW Network:
http://www.pownetwork.org/saudi/sd017.htm
U.S. Veterans Dispatch/1996
Ted Sampley

Lt. Cmdr. Micahel S. Speicher: Expendable

"There is no chance Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher survived, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney assured the American people within hours of the
Navy pilot's failure to return to the aircraft carrier Saratoga on the night of Jan. 16, 1991. He was last heard from over Iraqi flying northeast
toward Baghdad.    

Speicher, 33, of Jacksonville, Fla, was the first U. S. pilot shot down in the Gulf War. He left a wife, a 3-year-old daughter and a 1-year old
son.    

On Jan. 18, 1991, less than 48-hours after Speicher became missing, the Pentagon said his single-seat FA-18 Hornet fighter bomber was shot down
by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile. The plane "exploded to bits" in the sky after being hit.    

"Evidently, pieces of the plane were strewn all over the Iraqi landscape and Speicher's wing mates saw it happen," the official said.    

So, if Speicher and his aircraft "exploded to bits" all over the Iraqi sky in 1991, why, in December 1995, did a Pentagon team go to Iraq On a
secret mission to look at the wreckage of Speicher's fighter end to search for his remains?    

The search mission, which was led by the International Committee of the Red Cross and undertaken with the approval of Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein, found the wreckage virtually intact and upside down.

Pentagon spokesman Bev Baker said the U.S. team, which conducted a week long excavation and search of the site, found "no human remains" in the
wreckage or around the crash site.    

Evidence is now surfacing indicating that Speicher parachuted from his plane, landed safely, was alive on the ground and later captured. These
revelations have the Pentagon scrambling for cover. Naval intelligence is now saying they were never sure why Speicher's plane disintegrated in
midair. They now conclude he either had a freak midair collision with an Iraqi MIG-25 or that the enemy plane shot him out of the sky."    

No chance, huh Mr. VP???  Anyway, in follow up to my previous post about some of you blaming Clinton for everything short of Cancer, note how it was his admin. that followed up on this.  The best time to have found out what happened to this man was DURING THE WAR - when we had the Iraqis by the balls - not 5 yrs later.  Bush Sr.'s admin dropped the ball on this one b/c we all know how they wanted a nice tidy war w/in 100 days.  No Baghdad, no Saddam, no Kurdish rebellion, and not all of our men come home.  Now the legacy is POW's, Gulf War Syndrome, countless dead civilians, a second Gulf War, AND THE SAME FREAKING EVIL DICTATOR IN POWER!!!  Yes, nice tidy war that was George Sr.  Well, at least we got some cheap oil out of it for a couple of years.

Except for wild assed liberal places such as 'Whatreallyhappened.com', no reputable source has ever linked anyone to 'giving the green light to Saddam' other than April Glaspie, the US Ambassador to Iraq at the time.

So what is your source for saying that Saddam tried to clear the invasion with us 'multiple times'?

Maybe her language in responding to a simple question of how the US viewed the 'Arab-Arab' situation between Iraq and Kuwait should have been handled differently, but no one with any sense can argue that this mere misstatement by her was the cause of the invasion!  

Indeed, in November 1992, Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tarik Aziz, gave Glaspie some vindication. [b]He said she had not given Iraq a green light.[/b] "She just listened and made general comments," he told USA Today. "We knew the United States would have a strong reaction."

If it was all a mere misunderstanding of US intentions, why didn't Saddam immediately withdraw when it became obvious that the US was taking his invasion seriously?

Eric The(Inquisitive)Hun[>]:)]

That would be April Glaspie.  Let's see, the Iraqis say "Hey, we're having some serious problems w/ the Kuwaitis, what w/ them side-slant drilling into our oilfields & demanding immediate repayment of all loans, & oh, seeing as how they are our "19th province" anyway, we're going to have to solve our problems w/ them perhaps even through military means."  Glaspie "generally listens" & then makes general comments such as "Wow, that's terrible."  or "My, My, I'll have to check w/ State on this."  Please.  I never insinuated that anyone in the Bush admin. flat out said yeah sure go ahead & invade, but they sure as hell knew about what was generally afoot & did nothing to make it clear that such action would not be tolerated.  

BTW, care to address any of these points:

"I mean, exactly HOW MUCH intel could they glean from this guy that would make what would happen to them if we found out worth it?"

"The guy was shot down on the 1st day of the air war during Bush Sr's tenure, w/ VP Cheney in the Def. Depmt, w/ current SOS Powell as CJCOS. They searched the wreck site then, if they saw all this stuff why didn't Cheney's DOD classify him as MIA back then?"

"There is no chance Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher survived, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney assured the American people within hours of the
Navy pilot's failure to return to the aircraft carrier Saratoga on the night of Jan. 16, 1991. He was last heard from over Iraqi flying northeast
toward Baghdad."

"The best time to have found out what happened to this man was DURING THE WAR - when we had the Iraqis by the balls - not 5 yrs later. Bush Sr.'s admin dropped the ball on this one b/c we all know how they wanted a nice tidy war w/in 100 days. No Baghdad, no Saddam, no Kurdish rebellion, and not all of our men come home. Now the legacy is POW's, Gulf War Syndrome, countless dead civilians, a second Gulf War, AND THE SAME FREAKING EVIL DICTATOR IN POWER!!! Yes, nice tidy war that was George Sr. Well, at least we got some cheap oil out of it for a couple of years."

Also, how long before this also devolves into an Isreal v Palestine thread?  5 quids says 3 hours...

BTW, Bill Gertz is, as far as I know, a reputable reporter, and often breaks intelligence stories.  Add this to the fact that such reports about this pilot have been coming out for years & maybe there is something to them.  Good timing on it though b/c criticism against going after Iraq was really building, this shuts it up a bit I think.

Sorry, [b]jobux[/b], but your previous post indicated that the US had been asked several times before about Kuwait.

The only source for such a story is the April Glaspie story, which is, it appears the only time that [u]either[/u] of us know that the US gave the 'green light' to Saddam's invasion.

And I don't think that Saddam would have let anything short of a preemptive strike by the US delay his plans to invade Kuwait.

Insofar as how long it will take this thread to degenerate into a 'Israeli-Palestinian' pissing contest will depend upon whether DreckMan, Jesred, or robino decide to make it one!

I see no direct connection between this thread and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - they seem to see such a connection everywhere!

Eric The(TrustMeOnThis)Hun[>]:)]

Yeah, the Glaspie story is it, but it's enough to tell me that a.) she was incomepetent or b.) if she did get back to State & the rest of the Bush admin. - they were reckless in processing the info. and dealing w/ it preemptively.  That still doesn't change the fact that once this war started it was executed in a half-ass manner, we treated potential allies w/in Iraw in a half-ass manner, & worst of all, our veterans from that war were, and are still being treated in a half-ass manner.  Now we're having to go clean this mess up finally - I hope.

Now, I forget where I heard this before, and I will try and check it out, but the story I just recently heard was that it was none other than Gen. Colin Powell himself who decided it would be a great idea to end the war at 100 hours.

Here's a website that sorta discusses it:[url]http://www.dtic.mil/armylink/news/Mar1999/a19990303bush.html[/url]

I'll keep looking, but, anyway, as Commander in Chief it was Elder Bush's decision and one that he will have to live with for a long time.

In the meanwhile, I wouldn't be letting Gen. Powell make any strategic decisions, today!

Eric The(Especially,Today!)Hun[>]:)]