Twists and turns snagged missing pilot case (Michael Speicher)

[babylonsister]

Twists and turns snagged missing pilot case

By PAMELA HESS
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, this time. The United States just didn't believe him.

So it took the most powerful military in the world 18 years to find the remains of the only U.S. Air Force pilot shot down in an aerial battle in the 1991 Gulf War.

Michael "Scott" Speicher's bones lay 18 inches deep in Iraqi sand, more or less right where a group of Iraqis had led an American search team in 1995.

The search for Speicher was frustrated by two wars, mysteriously switched remains, Iraqi duplicity and a final tip from a young nomad in Anbar province.

U.S. officials often were blinded by the same myopia that tainted prewar intelligence - the American conviction that Hussein's government lied about everything. As it turned out, the Iraqis lied, but sometimes they told the truth.

For more than a decade, speculation swirled that the 33-year-old Speicher, a lieutenant commander when he went missing, had been captured alive. That was disproved by the team that found and confirmed his remains.

more...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MISSING_PILOT_HIDDEN_IN_SAND?SITE=CONGRA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[barbtries]

1. from the article:

Speicher was shot down by an Iraqi MiG 100 miles west of Baghdad on Jan. 17, 1991, the first day of the war to drive Saddam's invading forces from Kuwait. Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced the pilot's death as the first casualty of the war, but no search and rescue effort was launched.

why not cheney?