News-Info-Alerts

Re: No One Left Behind

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 06, 2002

"Leave no one behind? Don't bet on it
By DAVID SHELLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF

n “No One Left Behind: The Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story’’ (Dutton, 292 pgs., $25.95) by Amy Waters Yarsinske.

On the first night of the Gulf War, “Spike’’ Speicher’s F/A-18 Hornet hurtled off the flight deck of the USS Saratoga into the black skies over the Red Sea, en route to his bombing target deep inside Iraq.


No one, at least no American, would ever see him again — alive or dead.


But hours later and thousands of miles away at the Pentagon, then-Defense Secretary (and now Vice President) Dick Cheney and then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell said he was dead.


Of course, no one had looked for him, and no one would — not for years. Now, it seems, he may have been alive all along — and a prisoner of Saddam Hussein.


“Spike’’ Speicher had done more than fall from the skies over Iraq. He had fallen victim to indifference and incompetence, then to lies and intrigue for more than a decade.


Those are the conclusions of author Amy Waters Yarskinske, who brings more than a little authority to her subject. A former intelligence officer with the Navy Reserve, she co-wrote a series of Pulitzer Prize-nominated stories about the Speicher case for the Norfolk-based Virginian Pilot newspaper. And she’s well-versed in her subject, her husband being a former Navy aviator and a veteran of the Gulf War.


Among the book’s findings and conclusions:


n Speicher’s Hornet was not destroyed by an enemy missile, as it was initially thought. Instead, he ejected safely after becoming a “blue–on–blue’’ victim. “If an Iraqi pilot shot down an American F/A-18,’’ Vice Adm. Carlos Johnson says, “it would’ve been in the Iraqi media by morning. It wasn’t.’’


In the confusion in the air over Iraq that first night of Desert Storm, Speicher likely fell prey to so-called friendly fire.


n More than errors and incompetence doomed Speicher’s chances for a return home. “The political cowardice was unconscionable,’’ Johnson said. “We had the mentality that had there been some glimmer that he survived, we would’ve gone to find him, but we didn’t look at it close enough to make that determination.’’


n Facing an out-classed enemy, political and military leaders could not help but claim a complete slam dunk in the air war — even when the facts were there for everyone to see. Even then-President George Bush and war commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf subscribed to the “total victory’’ party line.


n And when Speicher, and later others, were down in enemy territory, Saddam was offering $35,000 for a downed air crew, a far cry from the coalition’s deal. “Sheep and goats weren’t as temping as cold, hard cash,’’ the author writes.


n Search and rescue operations, always a hazardous endeavor, were not necessarily a priority. So much for leaving no one behind — long a preeminent claim of America’s military.


“If we could not verify a man on the ground, we weren’t going after him,’’ says Maj. James Gregory Eanes. “The risk Â… did not outweigh the gain.’’


Says the author, “the math is simple. Seven searches out of 37, with only three recoveries, none inside the four to five hours (that) rescue forces like to work, left upward of 30 aircrews without rescue attempts.’’


n With Speicher never listed as an MIA, why would Saddam return him with the aircrews the coalition acknowledged as missing? The Iraqi dictator could hold him indefinitely, a trump card in a high-stakes game with Washington.


n A young family waits at home, not knowing whether its hero will ever return — a man listed as killed in action, then years later as missing in action, a man abandoned by the country for which he fought.

© 2001 Jacksonville Daily News"