Re: Saving Private Maupin

Date: June 11, 2004

"SAVING PRIVATE MAUPIN - OP Ed from NY Post

If Sen. Joseph Biden, Democrat of Dela ware, ever tires of hectoring Attorney General John Ashcroft about the Abu Ghraib prison, maybe he can turn his attention to the case of Pfc. Keith Maupin.

The 20-year-old Maupin has been listed missing-in-action since April 9, when his convoy was ambushed outside Baghdad.

Maupin promptly turned up in the one place Americans in Iraq least want to be: on al-Jazeera television, on tape.

"My name is Keith Matthew Maupin. I am a soldier from the 1st Division," he said, looking into the camera. "I am married with a 10-month-old son. I came to liberate Iraq."

One of the terrorists then tells viewers: "We are keeping him to be exchanged for some of the prisoners captured by the occupation forces."

Not a word about Maupin's whereabouts has surfaced since.

But what is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — and the Democratic Party's chief spokesman on national security and foreign policy — worked up about instead?

Whether memos written for the White House by Ashcroft's Justice Department, concerning what does or doesn't constitute "torture" in a legal sense, may have somehow "laid the groundwork" for the hooliganism at Abu Ghraib.

And he's been dumb as a post concerning the fate of Maupin.

Biden had this to say when Ashcroft was dragged before a Senate committee on Tuesday: "There's a reason we sign these treaties: To protect my son in the military. That's why we have these treaties, so when Americans are captured they are not tortured. That's the reason in case anyone forgets it."

Now, for the record, Biden's son is training to be an Army lawyer — and Ashcroft has a son in the military, too, who's just back from the Persian Gulf.

Protecting them, and every other U.S. serviceman, may be why America signs such treaties — but protection hasn't always been the result.

If Biden doubts it, he might ask Sen. John McCain about the Hanoi Hilton.

Nor do the terrorists we're fighting seem all that concerned about the niceties of the Geneva Convention — which bars targeting civilians, among other things.

That treaty didn't stop 9/11.

It didn't stop the terrorists from hacking off Nick Berg's head on videotape and proudly posting the grisly results on the Internet.

And it isn't likely to be what saves Keith Maupin — if, in fact, he's eventually returned to his family.

What could save Maupin is a U.S. military not unduly afraid to pursue and interrogate the terrorists who kidnap and mutilate our citizens.

Who, again, committed worse crimes 33 months ago right here in America.

And who are planning even worse crimes at this very moment.

Suppose a suitcase nuke with a ticking timer was hidden in Lower Manhattan at this very moment. And the FBI had in custody a terrorist who might know both where it was, and when it was to explode.

What then?

To torture?

Or not to torture?

Not an easy question — even in the abstract.

The administration would be derelict if it has not considered it — or developed protocols for extreme situations.

Certainly, grandstanding of the sort Biden demonstrated Tuesday adds nothing of value to what necessarily must be a nuanced discussion.

He'd do a lot more good defending principles that might help protect soldiers like Pfc. Maupin from being murdered on the Internet like Nick Berg.

To say nothing of saving the nation from another 9/11 — or worse.

©New York Post"