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thedrifter
04-11-03, 07:09 AM
Families of POWs still missing in Iraq fret over their fate


By David McLemore, The Dallas Morning News
European edition, Friday, April 11, 2003


Watching the televised jubilation at the apparent fall of Baghdad, a handful of American families whose soldier-children remain imprisoned in Iraq and their supporters were left to wonder when they could celebrate.

For the time being, those waiting for word on the fate of American POWs must take comfort in the military credo that no one gets left behind. It may just take a while.

"All day yesterday, I watched the joy in the streets of Baghdad on TV and kept waiting for some mention of the POWs," said Clydie Morgan, national adjutant of the American Ex-POWs Association in Arlington, Texas.

"We have to assume they are alive, and we're confident that the government will do all it can to bring them back. I just wish we'd heard something about them."

The Defense Department lists seven American POWs, including two male helicopter pilots from Fort Hood and four men and a woman from the 507th Maintenance Co. at Fort Bliss. An additional 11 U.S. soldiers are listed as missing, including two pilots from an Air Force F-15E downed Sunday near Tikrit.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that finding all U.S. personnel listed as prisoners or missing — including Navy Capt. Scott Speicher, whose F-18 was shot down on the first day of the 1991 Gulf War — is a top priority.

That's not exactly the answer the families want to hear.

"We are suffering here, and our children are suffering over there, and essentially it's two wars — my son over there and me, fighting my anxiety here," said Jose Hernandez of Alton, Texas, father of Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, 21, who is listed as a POW.

A final accounting won't be easy. The apparent fall of Saddam Hussein's regime aside, fighting in Iraq goes on. Iraq remains a nation in turmoil. Its political leadership has evaporated into the countryside. Its fighting forces have melted into isolated pockets of snipers and suicide bombers.

"American forces were looking for the POWs and the missing from Day One, trying to determine where they may be and who has them," said Phillip Anderson, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It may take a while, but no one is giving up on those young people."

U.S. military policy toward POWs and MIAs is straightforward, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office. "Every POW and every MIA is going to be accounted for. There is no time limit."

The government lists about 88,000 MIAs, most of them from World War II and Korea, Greer said.

Including Speicher in the government's vow to bring the POWs home is reassuring, said Morgan of the ex-POWs association, which has 27,000 members nationwide.

"We are confident there will be a final accounting of all the POWs and MIAs in Iraq," she said. "It's important on several levels. It's important to the families. It's important to the soldiers to know that someone cares enough to never give up. But it's equally important to all of us to know that we're all in this together."

Speicher, the only remaining MIA from the first Gulf War, initially was listed as killed in action. His status changed to MIA-captured in 2002, after U.S. officials received information that he had survived and had been seen alive in Baghdad.

The 75th Exploitation Task Force, a special unit of intelligence officers from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, is leading the hunt for American POWs and MIAs in Iraq, along with its search for weapons of mass destruction. The task force reports directly to U.S. Central Command.

That search, for now, is focusing on an area in and around Baghdad. However, officials said Thursday that remnants of the Iraqi leadership may have taken the POWs with them as they fled the capital. That led Central Command to send special operations troops to seal off roads leading to Jordan, Syria and Iran, as well as Saddam's ancestral home in Tikrit.

When Marines captured the Rasheed air base southeast of Baghdad on Wednesday, they found uniforms believed to be those of at least two current American POWs. The air base had served as an Iraqi POW camp during the 1991 war. Authorities declined to say whose names were on the uniforms, some of which had bloodstains and bullet holes.

"We remain concerned about those who are unaccounted for, and we hold the regime, whatever remains of it or whoever might have our prisoners of war in possession, accountable," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, Central Command deputy director of operations.

The lone bright spot has been the April 1 rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old supply clerk from the 507th. She is recovering from her injuries at a military hospital in Germany and has met with her family from Palestine, W.Va.

"We have to tell the Iraqis that we don't know exactly what they've done to our prisoners, but if they have harmed them, we will track them down, and we will hold them responsible," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who spent five years as a POW in North Vietnam.

"They'll lose this war. We will find them wherever they are."

Of particular concern to U.S. officials is the Iraqi regime's track record for harsh treatment of prisoners, including torture and denying International Committee of the Red Cross access, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The Red Cross, an intermediary between combatants on POW issues, has been denied access to American POWs in Iraq in this war, as well, U.S. officials said.

There has never been a full accounting of what happened to Speicher or hundreds of Kuwaitis held prisoner from the first Gulf War.

"It's hard to know what the POWs' fate may be," said Anderson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's hard to imagine that they'll be kept much longer now that the Iraqi regime has crumbled."


Sempers,

Roger