Missing in action

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See Missing in Action (film) for the film of this title and Missing In Action (arcade game) for the game, and M.I.A. for the Sri Lanken rapper.

Missing in Action is a term referring to a member of the armed services who is reported missing following combat and whose status as to injury, capture, or death is unknown.

Contents 1 In the US armed forces 1.1 The Kerry POW/MIA Committee 1.2 POW/MIA Issue Today 1.3 MIA in Iraq 2 Colloquial usage 3 External links

[edit] In the US armed forces

The term was first used in America in 1946 to refer to a member of the armed services who is reported missing following a combat mission and whose status as to injury, capture, or death is unknown. The missing combatant must not have been otherwise accounted for as either killed in action or a prisoner of war. Its American abbreviation (not commonly used elsewhere) is MIA.

[edit] The Kerry POW/MIA Committee

During the late 1970s and 1980s the friends and relatives of unaccounted for American GIs became politically active, requesting the U.S. government reveal what steps were taken to follow up on intelligence regarding last known alive MIAs and POWs. When initial inquiries revealed important information had not been pursued, many families and their supporters asked for the public release of POW/MIA records and called for an investigation.

Serious charges were leveled at the George H. W. Bush administration regarding the POW/MIA issue. The Defense Department, headed by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, had been accused of covering up information and failing to properly pursue intelligence about American POW/MIAs. In 1991,Vietnam veteran U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith introduced a resolution to create a Senate Select POW/MIA Committee. Kerry was eventually named chairman, and was joined on the committee by Senator and former POW John McCain, who had been a strong opponent of the creation of a Senate Select POW/MIA Committee. Six live sighting investigators hired by the committee unanimously concluded that the live sighting intelligence through 1989 showed Vietnam and Laos were still holding American prisoners. Template:Missing Village Voice April 4, 2004 Controversy erupted when Kerry ordered the report of the live sighting investigators to be shredded along with all of their personal notes.Template:Missing Village Voice April 4, 2004 Committee staffer Jon McCreary, on loan from the Defense Intelligence Agency, filed a memorandum on the shredding incident. Journalist Sydney Schanberg, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for some of his Southeast Asia coverage during the Vietnam War, described Kerry’s actions in a February 24, 2004 article for the Village Voice:

He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo—from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst—reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified.

Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents weren't originals, only copies—but the staff's fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didn't. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committee's expiration. This didn't happen.^{[citation needed]} Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld.” Another committee area that drew criticism was the secret behind the scenes dealings with members of the George Bush Sr. administration and Kerry’s office.^{[citation needed]} A declassified State Department memo shows that, even before the first set of hearings, Democrat Kerry’s office secretly contacted Republican Secretary of State Eagleburger’s office in an attempt to prevent Smith (who was known for asking tough questions) from becoming co-chairman, and instead asked that McCain be made co-chairman.^{[citation needed]} One memo that became a matter of public knowledge during the committee showed members of the Defense Department (the Secretary of Defense at the time was Dick Cheney) secretly working with Kerry’s office to script an upcoming hearing on the explosive topic of satellite imagery.^{[citation needed]} For an in-depth discussion of additional collaboration, see the August 3rd, 2004 Village Voice article "Brothers-in-Cover-up, When Kerry worked with Cheney on Vietnam P.O.W.'s" by Sydney H. Schanberg.

A shocking public revelation that drew headlines^{[citation needed]} during the committee was the admission by three former Secretaries of Defense that American POWs had been left behind in Southeast Asia. While the committee disagreed about whether POWs were still alive, as reflected in the minority and majority reports of the committee, all committee members agreed that the evidence was compelling but did not reach a degree of proof. The committee issued a number of unanimous recommendations regarding the pursuit of evidence, many of which were never implemented.^{[citation needed]}

Some argue that it is likely that prisoners taken by Vietnam are not alive today. They argue these prisoners would most likely have been killed and buried, to prevent their discovery. They argue that intelligence data is now out-of-date; such prisoners would be costly for the Vietnamese government to house, feed, and guard; and their existence, if discovered, would damage Vietnam's emerging economy.

Others emphasize that the United States has a responsibility to the men to determine their fate, and it should not be assumed that Vietnam executed all of the Americans. They point out that Vietnam has brought up the billions of dollars the U.S. promised in war reparations when the U.S. has asked about the fate of the missing. They feel that the U.S. government should release all intelligence related to the POWs, and that the Vietnamese government should be required to reveal what they did with the American prisoners.

[edit] POW/MIA Issue Today

Families have complained that POW/MIA records were not all released by the U.S. government.^{[citation needed]} In 2006, the National Alliance of Families found 1992 documents discussing the admission by Vietnam of capturing a number of missing Americans. The National Alliance contacted the families they could locate, and found that the Vietnamese admissions had been concealed from the families by the U.S. government.^{[citation needed]} The U.S. and Vietnamese governments had given every indication to the families that the men had been killed in their loss incidents. The names of the captured men and more details about the concealment can be found in newsletters of the National Alliance of Families—available on their website. According to the 1989 Intelligence Authorization Act, next-of-kin are to be provided live sighting records in a prompt manner.^{[citation needed]} A bill including criminal penalties for deliberately withholding POW/MIA records in violation of the law unanimously passed the House of Representatives in the 1990s. However, as also reported by Sydney Schanberg, such penalties were stripped from the law due to the efforts of former POW John McCain.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] MIA in Iraq

During the Persian Gulf War of 1991, an American pilot named Scott Speicher was reported as MIA after his F/A-18 was shot down in northern Iraq. In 1997, a Defense Department document leaked to the New York Times showed that the Pentagon had not been forthcoming with information previously requested by U.S. Senator Rod Grams.^{[citation needed]} Senator Grams publicly accused the Pentagon of misleading him, and joined with Senator Bob Smith in calling for an investigation by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. That investigation is ongoing. Much intelligence regarding Speicher's fate remains classified.^{[citation needed]} In the lead up to the Second Persian Gulf War Speicher's status was changed from Missing in Action to Missing-Captured, a move that suggested he was alive and imprisoned in Iraq.^{[citation needed]}

A small number of coalition soldiers went missing in action in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. In one prominent case, a US Marine of Lebanese background, Wassef Ali Hassoun, went missing and claimed to have been captured. He later turned up in Lebanon, and was flown home to the U.S. It was soon discovered Hassoun made the kidnapping story up, and Hassoun is currently a fugitive.^{[citation needed]}

US Army Sgt. Keith Maupin from Batavia, Ohio, was captured by insurgents in April 2004. He was allegedly executed in June 2004. A video showing Maupin's alleged execution was broadcast on Al Jazeera but the U.S has not confirmed Maupin is dead. He is still listed as captured. On October 23, 2006 US Army soldier Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie was kidnapped by insurgents and is listed as missing-captured. A $50,000 reward is being offered by the US government for information leading to his recovery. Since the war began only 2 US service men are still listed as MIA.

[edit] Colloquial usage

MIA is sometimes used in American English to describe difficulty finding something. "The TV remote is MIA." - it is less often used in this context in UK English, where the equivalent phrase is "gone AWOL".

[edit] External links

• A look at John McCain on the POW/MIA Issue
• When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A.
• Brothers-in-Cover-up When Kerry worked with Cheney on Vietnam P.O.W.'S
• Ron Arad — Reward — A site that offers a $10,000,000 reward for any proven information leading to the Israeli navigator Ron Arad who is missing in action in Lebanon.
• A look at John McCain on the POW/MIA Issue
• [http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040404/news_mz1e4schanbe.html Missing Village Voice, April 4, 2004
• Current status of MIA's from the Vietnam War
• Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding MIAs
• Report of the State Senate Committee on POW/MIA Affairs at the Library of Congress