Just another saturday in Afghanistan...Two navy men missing in Kabul - NATO leads manhunt while taliban claims they've been kidnapped

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Permalink Reply by AH Regier on July 30, 2010 at 2:46am

vance,

yes, everythhing I'd heard from last weekend sounded like it was a no holds barred manhunt....chaotic and intense with checkpoints everywhere...it was such an unusual set of circumstances that all the radio waves in eastern afghanistan were blasting with orders and reward offers.

my thoughts are with you son.

Vance Pace said:

Very sad, our son (who is in the 173rd) called us on Sunday to tell us they had been patroling like crazy looking for these guys. He sounded exhausted on the phone, and said they were getting a couple of hours of sleep, something to eat, and then going out again. Our thoughts are with the families of these men!

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Permalink Reply by AH Regier on July 30, 2010 at 3:11am

Dear Clare,

thanks for posting the article. it again seems that the only blessing from it --if it can be called that -- is that there is a conclusion and the families get the bodies. I agree with you that God is LOVE. it's simple, but I find it can be deceptively complex....and people can sometimes collapse into a way of dealing with the world that is essentially, 'an eye for an eye...an ear for an ear.' (in the not so distant past, Turkey, for instance, punished thiefs by literally chopping off one of their hands. I'm not sure if that's better -- in a biblical sense, in terms of crime and punishment -- than throwing them in jailfor five years, but it was legalized system for them.) Has some kind of terrible dark set of sinister forces gathered over Afghanistan, settling near its high mountains and creeping into its low valleys to set the stage for Armeggedon? I know that is how many people feel sometimes (but then, I feel that sometimes along the waterfront of brooklyn, where I live and where the Kingdom headquarters is, AND, where we all got front row seats to the disaster of 9/11 at the start of the century-- with its shiny airplanes shattering glass, the toxic black mushrooomm clouds that stuck in the air foor days...the stench of hundreds of burnt bodies lingering everywhere.

There is a quote from one of the soldier's in Sebastian's book, War..or maybe it was in Restrepo, where he says that god was nowhere in Korengal Valley. God had abandoned Korengal Valley.


but to tell you the truth, sometimes I wonder if its the other way around. I don't know how Jehovahs pray, but in the mediations I do, its all about listening. You listen very hard to some of the deeper rythmns of the universe, and if you listen very hard to the quiet, you can begin to hear some deep wise notes begin to play.

I can't believe that god has abandoned Afghanistan. I haven't been there yet, but I hear its very beautiful and very majestic in its lands, and the people are proud and have managed to survive on so little for so long. the country has also produced one of the greatest poets in the world, Rumi. This was in the 1200's, and he was more mystical and ecastatic than religious, exactly. But love and the larger divine spirit was his animating force. He writes, "Let love lead your soul. Make it a place to retire to, a kind of cave, a retreat for the deep core of being.

Try to to check him out if you get a chance. I think you'll like him. He went by one name: Rumi. And his work is as ppowerful today as it was hundreds of years ago, across different languages, and different faiths.

take care, clare.



Clare Rosalind Harrison said:

Hey Abigail....
Did you see this? What point are they trying to prove?....that they had the upperhand..obviously there is no GOD in these people who kill needlessly..no conscience..no regard for the worth of life....All this God sees....to the parents of these very young men and the lives left to carry on without them....my greatest condolence...such tragedy....my heart breaks for these....
Catch up with you later Abigail......






2nd Missing Sailor's Body Found In Afghanistan
by The Associated Press

July 29, 2010


A second U.S. Navy sailor who went missing in a dangerous part of eastern Afghanistan was found dead and his body recovered, a senior U.S. military official and Afghan officials said Thursday.

The family of Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove, a 25-year-old from the Seattle area, had been notified of his death, the U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to disclose the information.

Newlove and Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley went missing Friday in Logar province. NATO recovered the body of McNeley — a 30-year-old father of two from Wheatridge, Colo. — in the area Sunday.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in Kabul on Thursday that two days ago the Taliban left the "body of a dead American soldier for the U.S. forces" to recover. The Taliban said McNeley was killed in a firefight, and insurgents had captured Newlove. Mujahid offered no explanation for Newlove's death.

NATO officials have not offered an explanation as to why the two service members were in such a dangerous part of eastern Afghanistan.

The sailors were instructors at a counterinsurgency school for Afghan security forces, according to senior military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. The school was headquartered in Kabul and had classrooms outside the capital, but they were never assigned anywhere near where McNeley's body was recovered, officials said.

The chief of police of Logar province, Gen. Mustafa Mosseini, said coalition troops removed Newlove's body about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. An anti-terrorism official in Logar province, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case, also said coalition forces had recovered a body.

Mosseini said he believed the body washed downstream after rains Tuesday night.

He noted that in the past several days, the Taliban were being pressured by coalition forces in the area.

"The security was being tightened," Mosseini said. "Searches continued from both air and the ground. Militants were moving into Pakistan."

Mohammad Rahim Amin, the local government chief in Baraki Barak district, also said coalition forces recovered a body about 5:30 p.m. and flew it by helicopter to a coalition base in Logar province, about 40 miles away.

"The coalition told our criminal police director of the district that the body belonged to the foreign soldier they were looking for," Amin said.

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