Twists, turns snagged search for Speicher

[unhappycamper]

Twists, turns snagged search for Speicher
By Pamela Hess - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Nov 28, 2009 12:22:52 EST

WASHINGTON — 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. 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.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/11/ap_navy_speicher_search_112809/