Source:
Associated PressJACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Navy pilot Scott Speicher, the long-missing first casualty of the first Gulf War, was finally laid to rest Friday in his adopted hometown as thousands of people lined the streets to watch a funeral procession pass his school, church and former military base.
Speicher was shot down in 1991 on the first night of the Gulf War. For more than 18 years, no one knew if he was killed or being held prisoner in Iraq until his remains were discovered in the desert, west of Baghdad, earlier this month.
"Eighteen years, six months and 11 days, that needs to be a record that is never broken," said Buddy Harris, a former Navy pilot and friend who accompanied Speicher's body home to Jacksonville from Dover, Del. Harris married Speicher's widow, Joanne, and helped raise Speicher's son and daughter, plus two more children with Joanne.
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As Lieutenant Commander Speicher is finally laid to rest, I will never forget what MSM never reported: that he was used as an excuse for the infamous TF20's 4-5 man team in an attempt to have WMD planted in Iraq. From my 2nd edition of American Judas:
The first plan also originated with a story based on truth but filled with invention. In 1991, Lieutenant Commander Michael “Scott” Speicher was shot down over Iraq during the first day of Operation Desert Storm. He was classified as Killed in Action (KIA) within a few months thereafter. Ahmad Chalabi claimed that Speicher was alive and being held as a prisoner of war in order to convince the administration to invade Iraq. Armed with this pretext, the Pentagon civilian leadership under the guidance of Stephen Cambone, appointed to lead Defense Department intelligence in March 2003, dispatched a series of “off book” missions out of the ultra-secretive Office of Special Plans (OSP). Task Force 20, a 40-man assault team, was tasked to secure the following in order of priority: fallen Navy pilot Scott Speicher, WMD and Saddam Hussein. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Secretive_military_unit_sought_to_solve_0105.html
Following closely behind TF20 in the 75th Exploitation Task Force was Judy Miller. She had used Chalabi as a single source on information for her fictional WMD stories for the New York Times. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Secretive_military_unit_sought_to_solve_0105.html Chalabi was instrumental in transmitting the erroneous claims of an Iraqi defector codenamed “Curveball” about mobile biological weapons laboratories that the administration used as part of its war rationale. http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Alleged_intel_fixer_Chalabi_to_head_0223.html In her quest to find the infamous WMD, to say Miller rubbed her military companions the wrong way would be a huge understatement. Military officials said she had an “imperious manner” and “nobody could stand her” and that “she’s lucky we didn’t shoot her”. Apparently while embedded with these soldiers, “she wore a uniform” and told them “she had an exclusive deal with the Pentagon”. “Judith was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the Secretary of Defense” and as a result, “she ended up almost hijacking the mission”. http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0923-14.htm Perhaps a deeper investigation into this “journalist” might uncover whether these claims were based on a real Pentagon deal or if it was just bluster, like many of her WMD stories. It might also reveal just how close she was to another Iraq war critic, British scientist David Kelly. He disputed the validity of mobile weapons laboratories in Iraq, as well as the claim by British intelligence that Iraq could fire chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of such an order. Maybe if the Hutton Inquiry, which ruled that Kelly committed suicide July 17, 2003, (coincidentally just three days after Plame’s identity was revealed in Novak’s column) had questioned Miller under oath, we might have a greater understanding why one of the last e-mails he sent on the day of his untimely death was to her, and what Kelly might have meant when he mentioned “many dark actors playing games”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly
But the real dark actors lie within the extra-legal and unapproved task force missions deployed in obscurity by OSP through the approval of Feith, Cambone and Stephen Hadley. Of most concern is an alleged off-book 4-5 man team that operated in the summer and through the fall of 2003. Most sources pointed to TF20 as the most likely to have spawned this clandestine force. This force interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, telling them that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’ A source close to the UN Security Council said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Secretive_military_unit_sought_to_solve_0105.html
The possible involvement of TF20 in activity of questionable legality doesn’t end with the request for planted WMD. It continues after the creation of Task Force 121 from TF20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_20 TF121 was aggressively trained by Israelis at Fort Bragg, North Carolina as an assassination squad. One of the planners behind this offensive was Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html Boykin is infamous for saying in reference to the War on Terror that “the enemy is a guy named Satan” and regarding an Islamic Somalian warlord, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol”. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1016-01.htm After such dubious training, what is TF121 known for accomplishing in Iraq? Abusing detainees throughout Iraq in secret interrogation facilities like Abu Ghraib with beatings that, according to an investigation by retired Col. Stuart A. Herrington, could “technically” be illegal. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23372-2004Nov30.html And while we’re talking about torture, Feith seems to have something to do with the Iraqi prison abuses of Abu Ghraib. A part from being behind the phony “intelligence” gathered on the alleged WMD of Saddam, and behind the supporting of Ahmad Chalabi, it was Feith’s office who “housed the future undersecretary for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, who facilitated the transfer of Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that houses suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, to Abu Ghraib prison in the interests of extracting more intelligence from detainees. http://www.tribune-libanaise.com/tribune/article.php3?id_article=9http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-judas-2nd-edition-investigate.html
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