2/10/2008
Families of Crescent Security hostages frustrated
Families of civilian hostages frustrated by lack of information
Back in November, 2006, Jon Cote, Joshua Munns, Paul Reuben, John Young and Bert Nussbaumer were taken hostage in Iraq. For months, they’ve been participating in conference calls with a state department that seems clueless, or unable to tell the families anything except that this situation is ‘classified’.
This is little consolation.
The hostage families are now laying plans to move independent of the government to free their sons, since the government and Crescent Security have not given them any new information or even hope.
But this should come as little surprise. Crescent’s history and track record is an embarrassment. Crescent’s windows are now shuttered, like dozens of other companies that have come and gone in Iraq’s booming private security services market. Crescent leaves behind a trail of broken lives and a record of alleged misconduct. Last March, almost a year ago, the U.S. military barred Crescent from its U.S. bases after Crescent was found with weapons prohibited for private security companies, including rocket launchers and grenades, according to documents and interviews with former Crescent employees and U.S. officials.
Unfortunately none of this helps the sinking hopes and and low spirits of the hostage families who are still awaiting word of the plight of their loved ones.
See the website that Munns’ mom put up - The Missing 5.
Four American soldiers are believed to be hostages in Iraq. They are Staff Sgt. Keith M. Maupin, Spc. Ahmed Qusai al-Taei, Spc. Alex R. Jimenez and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty. The government is reporting nothing about them either.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:09 am
But I thought the private contractors were patriots, not some fly-by-night, cut-and-running criminal organization!
I’m sure glad the war is going so well otherwise and is not a huge, incompetently executed, catastrophic boondoggle at all.
I was just thinking about that fearsome photo of you holding the AK at the top of your page. It’s kind of ironic given the fact that if you saw a picture of a Muslim woman holding an AK, you’d almost certainly view it as a sign of their violent, radical tendencies (after wetting your pants, of course).
Should I interpret your photo as meaning you’re a violent radical?
February 11th, 2008 at 6:31 am
It’s a transformed image of Sarah Conner from the movie Terminator II. In the movie, she was fighting to win a world war, which we are certainly in right now, like it or not.
It visually emphasizes my criticism and commentary on issues, articles, news, etc..
Of course if that photo was instead a woman wearing a vest with bombs in it, holding a Palestinian flag, wearing hijab or a keffiyeh, you’d approve, wouldn’t you?
February 11th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I should have known it was a photo from Hollyweird. Whatever they say, conservatives love Hollyweird (Fred Thompson, Arnold, Reagan).
I’d think both you and the Palestinian radical are over-the-top. I just think it’s interesting that when they do it, you guys wet your pants en masse and yet the right-wing blogosphere is full of militaristic images. Usually posted by people with Cheeto-stained fingers who are pretend warriors.
If this is a world war, why aren’t you volunteering to go fight? Last time we had one, there was a draft. Now, for all the hype, we can’t even scrounge up enough troops to maintain peace in a country we ‘defeated’ almost 5 years ago. And then there is Afganistan where we only have 20,000 troops and the Taliban is resurgent.
No wonder we have to blow our tax dollars paying for fly-by-night fraudulent security companies to augment our insufficient troops. And look how well they take care of their people!
February 11th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I guess you missed my bio. The chickenhawk argument doesn’t make it here since my son has been to Iraq 4 times.
Nice try, though, when you have such great military heroes such as Jesse MacBeth to vouch for your side.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
4 times, huh? And that’s OK with you? What was he doing? As I recall in Vietnam, the average tour was 6 months and it was somewhat unusual to do it beyond 2 tours, unless you volunteered.
bush is lucky to have sheeple like you who make all of the sacrifices while he cuts taxes (exploding the deficit) for his non-fighting friends, shovels tax dollars at corrupt private military contractors (like the one you posted about) and borrows from the Saudis & Chinese to finance this so-called ‘world war’. Great vision he has! Is there any country in the history of the world that borrowed money from other countries to wage a world war and then maintained it’s position as the world’s leading power afterward? No wonder it gets worse every year we’re there. And I’m only talking about Iraq, not about the ongoing slide back into Talibangelism in Afganistan.
I don’t even know who Jesse Macbeth is. I’ll just assume he’s a military person who didn’t buy bush’s bs about ’success’ in Iraq hook, line, and sinker like you.
You should ask your son to post about his experiences. It would add an interesting angle to your blog.
February 12th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Now I’m a sheeple, LOL…
And you’re probably a devoted member of kerry’s VVAW.
February 12th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Billy Joe, you have No business speaking of Viet Nam as there are many Nam Vets posting on this site that would take exception to a punk like you even making mention of it as if you know something about it. I know plenty of Nam Vets who did 1 year tours and did up to 3 tours. They did it without complaint and honored this country in doing so only to be spit upon at airports by disrespectful punks like you when they returned. You can believe what you will, but do not speak with any authority about military service. You don’t know squat and that is obvious.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:19 am
The language he’s using is very telling, HAM.
First it’s the chickenhawk argument, then it flips over to the sheeple argument.
They have no new ideas since the Communist Manifesto, unfortunately.
Look at Strolling Naked through the Course Catalog
It seems as though this individual probably went to school at one of the places that has ‘getting dressed’ or ‘watching tv’ as a college course.