Scott SpeicherCaptain Michael Scott Speicher will soon be coming home. On Sunday, August 2nd 2009, one chapter in the First Gulf War of 1991 was brought to a close as the Military released the statement that a body found in the Anbar Province of Iraq, by Al Asad Air Base, was positively identified as those of Captain Michael Scott Speicher. Captain Speicher was shot down flying a combat mission in an F/A-18 Hornet over west-central Iraq on January 17th. As one of the first pilots in the air, then a Lieutenant Commander, Scott Speicher’s job was to locate surface to air defenses and knock them out. This would open a safe corridor for other pilots to come and wipe out ground targets starting with command and control. Scott Speicher’s was part of the SEAD system or Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, to suppress enemy surface to air defenses and to knock out anti-aircraft artillery primarily in the first hours of an attack. The plane he was flying was an F/A-18 Hornet which is an all-weather, carrier-capable, multi-role jet fighter which is designed to attack both ground and aerial targets. The F/A-18 was designed to be used by the United States Navy and Marie Corps. We may never know what Scott’s exact mission was that January morning, but it probably had something to do with SEAD—suppression of enemy air defenses. We will probably never know how many targets he destroyed before being hit. We may never know how many lives he saved by taking out the enemy’s ground to air defenses. Some believe he was shot down by an Iraqi fighter jet. All that exists is hear say at this point, no written records have been found to collaborate this claim by the Iraqi pilot. While the debate on whether he was dead before or after he hit the ground will probably go on for some time, the story of Captain Speicher heroism will most certainly be talked about for years to come. If you are a watcher of CSI, then we can believe that they forensic specialist should be able to tell how and when Captain Speicher died. The good news is that he has been found. The family can rest knowing that his body has been found and he will be returned to the United States for a proper burial. Over the years his status has changed, his rank has changed and there had been many to say he was alive and we needed to keep looking for him. So the search went on and on and on for eighteen years and finally a break through. In contrast, the ISG searched for Weapons of Mass Destruction for about two years, then gave up and said they did not exist. If the search for WMD had gone on longer, had the United States dug deeper then perhaps those weapons or the evidence of where they went would have been found. Finding these weapons would prove that the United States did the right thing. I would love to see the aftermath on Capitol Hill and the rest of the World if these weapons or proof of their existence were found. Chances are the programs Saddam had were moved to Syria and Iran. In the early days of his disappearance, the Navy promised that it would never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless of how long or how difficult that search may be. Then U.S. investigators found what may have be a clue to his capture. His initials were found etched into a prison wall in Baghdad. Speicher and three other pilots flew off the USS Saratoga for a bombing on Jan. 17, 1991, the first night of the Persian Gulf War. I was in Germany when the mission was being flown. By the time someone called me on the phone and woke me to tell me the attack had begun, Scott, was probably down already. During the mission, another Hornet pilot reported that he saw a flash and lost sight of Capt. Speicher. Attempts to raise him by radio failed. The next morning, the Defense Department announced that Capt. Speicher's plane had been downed by an Iraqi missile. At this time, all of America’s Warriors missing from both Gulf Wars have come home, both the living and now the dead. God Bless America.
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