Terrorists with Ties to Iran Claim Western Hostage Taking

The Jawa Report ^ | orig: November 20, 2006 | Vanity update

[corbie]

On November 17, 2006, in Safwan, Iraq, a previously unknown group of insurgents used a phony check point to hijack a convoy transporting material from the Crescent Security Group’s home base in Kuwait to the Iraqi interior. Five security personnel—four Americans, and one Austrian national, all employees of Crescent Security—were captured and remain as hostages. Following an initial flurry of search-and-recovery activity, Paul Reuben (Minnesota), John Young (Kansas), Jonathan Cote (Florida), Josh Munz (California), and Bert Nussbauer (Vienna, Austria) dropped off the media screen as they were abandoned to the whims of their captors.

Several home-town newspapers and conservative bloggers took up the cause of these brave men after a video appeared showing them in apparent good health, but pleading for assistance from their governments, their friends and families, and the general public. (See: Sign On San Diego, January 3, 2007; My Pet Jawa, November 20, 2006; My Pet Jawa, January 3, 2007; Townhall, January 3, 2007; MSNBC, November 17, 2006.

The group holding the security personnel made relatively modest demands: all five men would be released for a ransom of $150,000. That communication came sometime in late November or early December 2006. Except for a smattering of reports from informants in Iraq, nothing has been heard from the kidnappers since.

Because no one in Intelligence could identify the kidnappers (Al-Qaeda? Sunni insurgents? Iraqi thugs and criminals? or Iranian delegates from Muktah al-Sadr’s militia?), the US government has pursued its “no ransom for hostages” policy in regard to the security personnel. Contrast this with the recent situation when four American military personnel were taken captive in May. The US and Iraqi armies mounted a full-scale military assault on the Iraqis in the area surrounding Baghdad in an attempt to recover the prisoners.

Even Crescent Security walked away from the problem—the men held hostage were considered “punched out” at the time they were taken captive. The company would not be responsible for its own employees who were trying to safeguard a mile-long supply convoy with too few men, inadequate fire power, and a general lack of intelligence about where the legitimate check points were situated along the road.

Despite the dithering typical of the US government, American ingenuity attempted to come to the rescue. A group of loved ones, families, friends, co-workers, and military buddies dedicated themselves to the cause of “bringing our boys back home.” Calling their group “Save 5,” these good people developed a website, organized fundraisers, contributed their own money, and kept fighting to win some kind of media recognition for the guys being held in Iraq. Each of them had gone to work for Crescent Security because employment as security personnel in the Iraqi hell-hole offered them a chance to make life better for themselves and their families at home.

The website, www.save5.net, remains on-line as a conduit for the funds and information contributed to the rescue effort. Not only did money begin to flow into the general rescue fund, but information about the abductors started to accumulate. People who had served in military, corporate, or reconstructive endeavors in the Middle-East contacted friends and acquaintances in Kuwait and Iraq to find out what they knew about potential insurgents. They combed through their personal logs in order to find connections that might help in rescuing the Americans. Contact information, names, and phone numbers came out of nowhere to fill in the gaps of the database devoted to “our friends.”

Enter the jack-booted thugs from the FBI, who spread disinformation about the Save 5 coalition, disavowing its work, and worst of all menacing its participants with threats of “legal action” for “negotiating, consorting, and abetting the work of terrorist groups with interests inimical to those of the U.S.” All this occurred against a Fox-televised backdrop of a burkha-clad Nancy Pelosi discussing foreign policy with Syria’s President Assad.

The FBI threat did not deter our activities: Mark Koscielski boldly went to Kuwait, supplied with a monetary pipeline, names and numbers of Middle-Eastern contacts, a laptop for communication, and a willingness to negotiate for the release of the hostages. Unfortunately, his attempts were thwarted by his inability to get the U.S. government-sanctioned papers necessary to travel into the war zone.

Had the missing contractors and the Save 5 Coalition been “undocumented” workers, serial killers, or pedophiles, our representatives, buttressed by the support of the ACLU, would scrutinize the Constitution for a clause to justify participating in a rescue effort. The government would have found a way to pay the ransom and bringing our husbands and fathers, sons and brothers back home, if only to assure their “civil rights.” However, the abducted hostages and the Save 5 Coalition who are working so intently to redeem them are patriotic, law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying citizens--the deadwood in Washington, D.C., can choose to ignore us and force us back to square one.

The accompanying press release from Mark Koscielski, writing for the Save 5 Coalition, shows the general dissatisfaction and frustration of private citizens who desperately want to accomplish something positive, but have to deal with our governmental representatives who turn a deaf ear to our pleas. They won’t act to rescue our loved ones, nor will they allow us to intervene, on our own dime, our own time, at our own risk.

[corbie]

To: All Americans

From: The Save 5 Coalition

It is imperative that every thinking American take note that as our US Congress dickers about how to maximize the political implications of supporting or not supporting our mission in Iraq, civilian and military families continue to agonize over the fates of their loved ones, taken hostage in Iraq by insurgents, thugs or simple criminals.

Is there a discernible difference?

Our government is acting aggressively to find the four military personnel recently captured by terrorists in Iraq before they are tortured, beheaded, and desecrated on videos released to Al-Jazeera. Yet, five civilian contractors employed by a US-sanctioned security company have been forgotten after their November abduction and imprisonment. They remain in the custody of some purportedly “unknown” Iraqi cell of criminals.

We, the family, friends, and loved ones of those captured in November, have actively sought help from our U.S. Government, from our federal agencies, from our senators and congressional representatives. We have proffered information, money, and our individual willingness to act as rescue agents for our heroes, yet the people and agencies in power, whose primary constitutional responsibility is to defend and protect the citizenry, stand stupefied. But as representatives of our government, they did give us their best shot. They lied to us!

Our Middle-Eastern liaison will return to Kuwait on June 4, 2007, following a short-term, stateside debriefing with family, friends, and fellow warriors who are laboring for the release of the Crescent Security hostages. We have asked representatives of the U.S. Government to meet with this contact and our team, and unite with the patriotic spirit of Americans in a privately subsidized effort to free these five, good and decent servants of the United States from their captivity in Iraq.

The politicians have failed us and will not even offer their “nuanced” help. Their response to e-mail and phone appeals for aid in the effort to retrieve the five hostages is to remind us to contact the US Representatives from our states. (I tried that and got NO help from our Minnesota congresspersons: Thank you, Senator Coleman, Senator Klobuchar, and Representative Ellison for once again displaying the pseudo-patriotism and mock compassion that instated you in office.) We will post the roster of governmental Pontius Pilates that have walked away, without further comment, from this vital issue in a few days at www.save5.net.

I once thought that the “US” cited in every governmental pronouncement represented more than quick and simple shorthand for the “United States.” I believed it implied the unanimity of all Americans in pursuit of the goals, rights, and liberties that our Forefathers so carefully delineated for us.

Now it seems that the 435+ “civil servants” throughout our government who are elected to ensure American security and safety are more concerned with protecting their own position and power than with acting for the people. While these politicians dither about the “civil rights” accorded to criminals, they will raise neither pen nor voice in defense of those innocent persons who left this beautiful country to serve as much needed security contractors in Iraq in order to maximize their earning potential to benefit their children.

God bless America—we have never needed His attention more.

Mark Koscielski

1-612-827-3832

Please take the time to assist in this worthwhile rescue effort. Call, e-mail, or fax your representatives expressing your concerns about the contractors abducted in Iraq. Demand that the elected officials help Mark Koscielski obtain the civil documentation he needs to enter into Iraq to negotiate with the captors. Remind the politicians who supposedly serve “the will of the people” that if they’re not going to assist in a worthwhile, just, and patriotic cause, common decency requires that they at least get out of the way.

Thank you.