It appears that, once again, soldiers captured by the enemy in Iraq have not been treated as the Geneva Conventions require prisoners to be treated.

The bodies of two U.S. soldiers missing in Iraq for more than a year have been found, their families said Thursday night. The military would not immediately confirm the report.

The father of Army Sgt. Alex Jimenez, of Lawrence, Mass., said the remains of his son and another soldier, Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, of Waterford, Mich., had been identified in Iraq.

Jimenez, 25, and Fouty, 19, were kidnapped along with a third member of the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division during an ambush in May 2007 in the volatile area south of Baghdad known as the "triangle of death." The body of the third seized soldier, Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr. of Torrance, Calif., was found in the Euphrates River a year later.

Once again we face the sad reality of war -- that there will always be young men 9and some young women), fighting on our behalf, who return home is a somber one as part of the roll of our nation's honored dead rather than the joyous exultation of a safe restoration to their friends and families. This is one of those cases.

And I would like to return to my earlier point. Under the Geneva Conventions, these men should have been held in safe, comfortable conditions with access to food, medical treatment, and means of communication with their families. If they died of their wounds in battle, their remains should have been swiftly repatriated. Instead, based upon what we know of their companion's treatment, they have been brutally murdered and their remains improperly disposed of by the war criminals who held them.

I wonder -- will the "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" and "panties on the head is torture" crowd that demands civilian trials for terrorists and the closure of Gitmo be out in the streets denouncing the murder of these young men by those whose relatively gentle treatment by the United States they denounce as a war crime? or will we instead hear them blame George W. Bush, not the terrorists we are fighting in Iraq and elsewhere, for their deaths? I suspect we know the answer -- and it exposes the true difference between them and members of the US military who, like Sgt. Alex Jimenez and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, who daily show us what true patriotism and heroism really are.

May God give comfort to the families of these brave men -- and may He make use of their fellow soldiers to inflict His righteous judgment upon those who took their lives.

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Posted by: Greg at 12:02 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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