With Withdrawal Looming, Trails Grow Cold for Americans Missing in Iraq

Source: The New York Times

BAGHDAD — The last Americans missing in Iraq followed disparate paths to an uncertain fate. They arrived from Indiana and North Carolina, Chicago and Denver. They came out of a sense of duty, in search of a paycheck, or hoping to reclaim a homeland they had fled decades earlier.

But the lives of the eight men — seven private contractors and the only American service member who remains unaccounted — are a painful fragment of the war’s legacy, a haunting piece of unfinished business that the military will leave behind when it withdraws by the end of the year.

“He called and said, ‘I’m catching a plane tomorrow and I’ll be home,’ ” said Jim Ake, whose son Jeffrey, a businessman from Indiana, vanished in 2005. “It didn’t happen. That was the last we heard from him.”

Like scores of other tasks — running convoys, flying helicopters and tracking incoming mortar fire — the military will soon leave the job of determining the fates of the missing largely to civilians. The military is still finalizing its plans, but the cases of the seven contractors are expected to be handed over to the American Embassy, with the missing soldier’s case going to the United States Central Command.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/world/middleeast/22missing.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all