Evidence uncovered late last year and confirmned recently shows that capt. scott speicher, who was shot down over Iraq the first night of the gulf war, is alive and is a POW in Iraq. Capt. Speicher is the first person ever to upgraded from KIA, to MIA, and then to POW by the DOD. I think its awful that Saddam refuses to meet even the simplest of war rules such as the return of prisoners. Saddam holds 600 Kuwaitis from the gulf war, and probably speicher aswell, which leads me to wonder if more Americans are POW's in Iraq.
Yeah, you're right. We should just write off our possibly captured serivcemen. I guess "POW/MIA You are not forgotten" doesn't mean anything anymore. How insensitive of you
it's easy to say that when he's nothing more than a news story. http://www.freescottspeicher.com/ ever since i've been a kid i've been huge on POW/MIA and the lack of support. finding people takes more than flying a flag and slapping a bumper sticker on your car. i write my representatives often to seek and audience to push for more info on what we can do for them(lately on speicher). don't drop your pants and take a crap on someone's cause.
OK, I've reviewed the evidence as presented by http://www.freescottspeicher.com and I still have a few questions... 1) Where is this reclassification to "POW"? All I have seen is that he was reclassified from KIA to MIA. (Oops, scratch that - I see it now, 11 Oct 2002) 2) MIA is probably the correct classification, but the only evidence supporting the theory that he might be alive is a "eyewitness" report 9 years later. I don't know if you guys know this, but eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable (scroll down to the part labeled "Eyewitness Testimony Questionable"). So, while there is no evidence he is dead, there is also no evidence he is alive. Can you reconcile this? 3) The Navy says that they have no evidence that he is captured - just that Iraq knows more than they are letting on. The POW classification seems to be solely designed to put pressure on Iraq to come clean. Reconcile? The belief that Speicher is alive is nothing more than wishful thinking, IMO. There really isn't any credible evidence for any classification other than MIA presumed dead (KIA is not accurate, since there isn't any evidence he is dead).
well said foos. personally, i dont think the guy is with us any more, as sad as that is. could he have survived the crash and been taken away by iraqi military forces? sure. could he have been an unknown POW to our military and therefore never been reported by iraq? sure. is he still alive in iraq? not so sure...i gotta believe that if he was still alive, someone would know something and the word would have gotten out in a more credible way then some eyewitness reports. but that is just me...
He is still the first person ever to go from KIA to MIA. That right there is enough for me to believe he is alive.
Fair enough. Hardly convincing "evidence" when you consider he was wrongfully classified KIA in the first place since there was no direct evidence he was dead (like a body, for example). I mean, do you really believe Laci Peterson is alive? There is no evidence she's not... just as there is no evidence she is alive. She's essentially MIA presumed dead.
apparantly you haven't been paying much attention to this. but you are entitled to you opinion and i understand why you feel this way. going to war however would not be a positive way to remove scott if he is still alive.
I would agree with this. Since the US classified him as KIA the day after he was shot down the Iraqi's had no reason to claim him as a POW (if they did have him). So there was no real proof that he was a POW or that he was KIA. The only place to classify him is MIA. Which is what the US should have done in the first place. Also, the upgrade to POW was purely a political move.