8,000 troops widen search for missing GIs

By Joseph Giordono, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, June 20, 2006

American military officials Monday named the two soldiers listed as missing after an insurgent attack on Friday and also announced that more than 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops are involved in a widening search that has become a top military priority in the country.

<snip>

At least three suspected insurgents have been killed in the search, with 34 more taken into custody in what officials called “significant” clashes in the search area. Seven U.S. troops supporting the search have been wounded, Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell said. American and Iraqi forces have received more than 63 tips in regards to the incident, officials said.

“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.

<snip>

A third U.S. soldier in Iraq — Sgt. Keith “Matt” Maupin — has been listed as missing since an April 2004 attack on a convoy in Fallujah.

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=38050

on the heels of jr's big media coup last week. I'll bet it's more like 50,000 out there looking for those GIs. No one is safe in Iraq until they turn them up.

But I don't think most people find it to be a major humiliation.

An embarassment, but not major humiliation. Either outrage or retreat depending on how the public responds to the inevitable video, if the group that claims to have them actually does have them, and stops soiling their pants from excessive quivering in fear long enough to be able to put together the video and deliver it to a stringer.

I'm sure massive humiliation to result in quick and immediate withdrawal by the cowardly crusader forces is the spin that'll be put on it. Then again, I read one rather humorously inflammatory article (on a certainly non-mainstream website that took itself far too seriously, as these kinds of sites invariably do) on 7/8/05 that described the mass hysteria and confusion in the N., E., S., W. of London, as many hundreds of thousands of Londoners used every means of transportion available to flee the 7/7 attacks and seek shelter in the suburbs after the news became known; downtown was deserted, the roads and trains and buses out of London packed with fleeing Londoners, dazed looks on their faces and eyes glazed over, crumpled and dishevelled. It was a great victory for Islam, striking fear in the heart of the infidel crusader. Yada-yada.

To me it sounded like a fairly normal rush hour.

We see everything through the prism of our own culture and perceptions. Go figure.

...Their doctrine was to put a division and a half on the ground to find insurgents....

This is 100% embarrassing to us. As is our presence in Iraq.

has occurred. I heard a rumor that personnel had been kidnapped before, and that the kidnappers had a habit of chopping off their heads and leaving them in toilets (I hope that is not true)(my friend read it on website). In any case, I'll bet this has happened before, sadly. I'm praying that they will find the missing soldiers alive.

were these soldiers "kidnapped" or "abducted" instead of "captured" by the enemy?

It isn't "war"; it's TEGWAR - The Endless Game Without Any Rules

We have psychopaths in the adminsitration who think of themselves as "rule-makers" (rulers) rather than "rule-followers" (ruled).