U.S. finds IDs of 2 GIs missing in Iraq

Source: Assoc Press

By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago

BAGHDAD - The identification cards of two American soldiers missing since an attack on their unit in May were found in an al-Qaida safe house north of Baghdad, along with video production equipment, computers and weapons, the U.S. military said Saturday.

The house, discovered June 9 near Samarra — more than 100 miles from the area where they disappeared — was otherwise empty, the statement said. American soldiers approaching the building came under fire from a nearby stand of trees, and two were wounded before air support could arrive...

Separately, the military said an American soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in southern Baghdad and an Ohio National Guard pilot was killed when his F-16 fighter crashed shortly after takeoff from Balad Air Base in central Iraq. The two deaths on Friday brought to at least 3,522 the number of American military personnel who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count...



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070616/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

The kid on the right is from MA. His family are beside themselves with worry, naturally.

whare are the weapons of mass destruction?

which they knew because it had the official Al Qaida emblem on the door. :eyes:

AQIZ does in fact have its own flag that it flies, does in fact have its own distinctive armband its members wear, does in fact label its safehouses as to who is living there. This kind of provincial thought process that they don't ID themselves is frustrating when I come to DU, they aint hard to find, they leave clues all over the place as to who they are, so when we kill them or find one of their nests, it's pretty easy to tell who they are........

Al qaeda in Iraq flag, their armbands look exactly the same, if you are wearing one and you are not AQIZ and AQIZ sees you they will gun you down in the streets........they wear this flag like we wear ours on our ACU's..........

Forgive my ignorance sandskrit. Thanks for the enlightenment. Sorry again. Life long cynic talking here. Peace.

All the props seem to be there in place, all they needed was a little Hollywood music.

I'd bet a few rounds that this is just psych-ops.


Hopefully, they'll find these guys alive and soon.

What possible psyop benefit could this be?

These two guys were kidnapped south of Baghdad, logic in a kidnapping dictates getting your victim far away fast before the manhunt cranks up. Samarra is known to be an AQIZ hotspot, there is no way one could tie this to the mosque bombings........

I don't talk about my combat experiences, but I am intimately familiar with AQIZ and their operations in Central Salahdin province, if I had been in command I would not have wasted 3 weeks looking for these guys in Babil province, I would have gone straight to Samarra or straight to Khalis west of Baqubah.........

They find video equipment, computers, other electronics and these two ID cards. Why is this gear just sitting around, why are these ID cards found? Why not destroy the evidence? It seems because someone wants these items to be found.

I agree, the area in which the evidence was found is perfectly on target for the kidnappers, get them to a "safe" haven for the kidnappers.

As it was described in the news story, the room was found in just a way that seems planned out too perfectly for discovery. But, we are not privy to the full details, so I'm only making an educated guess from a modest human behavior background.

They may be legit ID cards, I just get a strong feeling from the reported story that this very well could be psy-ops from the kidnappers. Or maybe a strange chess move on our end to get the two soldiers back safely.

From the information in the story, something just isn't quite right for me.

licenses, and so forth.

It could well be that the wallet contents went in a different direction than the hostages, for the purposes of creating forged documents in the future. And if you knew someone was coming, you wouldn't leave your computers and expensive gear laying about for your enemy to seize.

I am hoping they survive, but realistically it isn't looking too good for them as time continues to pass. They're still calling Matt Maupin a POW, and I do believe he has been executed.