Two kidnapped soldiers found dead in Iraq

The Washington Post is reporting that the two Army soldiers kidnapped last week by terrorists in Iraq have been found dead:

BAGHDAD, July 20--Two U.S. soldiers missing since an attack on a checkpoint last week have been found dead near a power plant in Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad, according to an Iraqi defense official.

Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Muhammed-Jassim, head of operations at Iraqi Ministry of Defense said the soldiers had been "barbarically" killed and that there were traces of torture on their bodies. He offered no further details.

The Army on Monday identified the missing soldiers as Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. They were attacked at a checkpoint near Yusufiyah. A third soldier, Spec. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the incident.

In a statement posted to the Internet, the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed to have abducted the soldiers. The organization had issued a series of Internet statements in recent days vowing revenge on U.S.-led forces for the killing of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was targeted in a massive U.S. airstrike on June 7.

Typical of the way Al-Qaeda works: As retaliation for the death of one of your men, kidnap and torture and kill people who had nothing to do with his death.

Granted, US Military in Iraq will always have targets on their backs.  But I respect the fact that those men and women are willing to go over there and become targets in order that Al-Qaeda won't strike here.  I'm also thankful that neither of the dead soldiers was a woman.

Please pray for these brave men and their families.

More at Stop The ACLU and Blogs of War.

Photos of the slain soldiers:

News reports now indicate that the recovered bodies showed signs of torture and that the men may have been beheaded.  I would guess that the torture endured by these brave men was a bit more serious than wearing women's underwear and dog collars.

McQ at QandO Blog makes these observations:

This will be the lesson of the day from every commander out there. When you have a group that small, you never split them. You either all go, or you all stay.

There's another lesson, an unofficial one, which will be passed among the troops themselves. Never surrender. They'll just kill you anyway. It's better to go down fighting.

Michelle Malkin links to a TownHall.com column by Jeff Emanuel that points out an all-too-common trend when Americans die at the hands of terrorists:

Interestingly silent on this and other atrocities carried out by the insurgents in Iraq are the “human rights” groups who seem to spend every day accusing the United States of torture, war crimes, and various human rights violations. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called the Iraq war “illegal,” and John Pace, former UN chief of Human Rights for Iraq, has said that human rights conditions are “as bad now as they were under Saddam,” but was it America that filled mass graves with hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians? Last month, Human Rights Watch again accused the US of “brutalizing Muslim suspects in the name of the war on terror,” but how many times have Americans strapped bombs to their own chests and purposely detonated themselves in a large crowd of civilians? Amnesty International’s website highlights America’s use of “torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” against terrorist captives, but how many prisoners—Muslim or otherwise—have Americans brutally beheaded?

Indeed.  Anyone care to determine how many times the Geneva Conventions would be violated by a group of non-uniformed terrorists who kidnapped, tortured, and beheaded uniformed members of an opposing military?

(UPDATE: Michelle Malkin reports that Amnesty International actually released a statement condemning the terrorists.  Good for them.)

And finally, the parade of victimized families has begun.  It started yesterday, possibly before all the next-of-kin were notified, not even 24 hours after the news reached America.  Grieving families can't even get 24 hours to themeselves anymore.

Both Tucker and Menchaca were volunteers who enlisted well after 9/11.  Undoubtedly both of these men knew that there was a high probability of seeing combat.  Yet they volunteered anyway.  Their decision has to be respected.

The Tucker family issued a simple statement thanking their community for supporting their son and requesting prayers for the servicemen and women still in Iraq.  They also released a portion of a message that Thomas had left on the family answering machine: ""Be proud of me Mom, I'm defending my country.  Tell sis and my nephews hello for me, I'm OK, I'm on my way."

Naturally the Tucker family didn't make the headlines or lead paragraphs in the news stories.  That honor went to a handful of Menchaca's relatives:

"It's very upsetting to me that they would give you details of the torture, of the beheading," said Mario Vasquez, Menchaca's uncle.

Menchaca's mother, Maria Vasquez, answered her door in Brownsville early Tuesday sobbing and unable to speak. She issued a statement written in Spanish that said, "I am against the war and I feel very hurt by what has happened to my son."

Here are the lead paragraphs from another AP story:

The uncle of a U.S. soldier who disappeared after a firefight in Iraq lashed out at the government Tuesday after learning two bodies had reportedly been found not far from where his nephew and another soldier were last seen.

"The news is going to be heartbreaking for my family," Ken MacKenzie, uncle of Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, told NBC's "Today" show. "Because the U.S. government did not have a plan in place, my nephew has paid for it with his life," he said.

MacKenzie said he had not received confirmation from the U.S. military that his nephew had been found. Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed announced the finding in a statement early Tuesday. U.S. Maj. Doug Powell said he could not confirm the report.

I'm not upset at Menchaca's relatives.  But I'm very disturbed that the press continues to seek out the most damaging statements it can find in order to use them in headlines and as lead-ins to news stories.

I almost wish that there was a Democrat in the White House right now, just so we could wintess the immediate end of this despicable practice.

(WizBang has more of the other things that Ken MacKenzie said that were edited out of the AP report.)

Comments

[REB 84]

Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy

Why are we in Iraq? First we were told it was because Saddam had WMD and we could expect mushroom clouds over American cities if he were allowed to stay in power; then the goal was getting rid of a brutal dictator who gassed his own people and by the way has a "blood feud" with America; the latest rationale is that we are bringing democracy to a troubled part of the world.

The rad-con democracy domino theory is that Iraq will become a shining example of representative democracy in the Middle East that all its neighbors will desire to emulate. Yet, despite a couple of elections; this utopia seems further away than ever.

Meanwhile, back here in the USA, the Bush administration is quietly choking off funding to the primary organizations that are actually training Iraqis on how to set up and run democratic political parties, elections, and governments. Is this hypocrisy?

"The commitment to what the president of the United States will say every single day of the week is his number one priority in Iraq, when it's translated into action, looks very tiny," said Les Campbell, who runs programs in the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, known as NDI.(see link to story in title) Apparently, there has been no response to these reports from the White House.

It appears that military and security spending is cutting back the only legitimate pro-democracy efforts America is conducting in Iraq. This is just the latest example of the Bush administration's failure to put the money where its mouth is. If we really want to know what politicians value, we need to find out what programs they fund and which they cut.

QuestionItNow

posted by REB 84 at 4/06/2006