An important day

Today is one of those good/bad days. It is now public knowledge that we have recovered the remains of Sergeant Matt Maupin. You can read the story here.


SGT Keith Matthew Maupin was captured in 2004. He was then the rank of Private First Class (PFC). He has since been promoted twice in keeping with Army policy of treating MIAs as continuing to serve.


It's a bad day certainly. Whatever hope we had held out that SGT Maupin would be found alive is now gone. I realize that most had succumbed to the facts and realized that Matt was probably not coming home. I am sure though that his parents and family held out at least some hope.


It is a good day in that his family can now put closure to SGT Maupin's death. I certainly don't know how you move on from this. I can only assume that knowing is somehow better than not knowing. It is a good day for soldiers too. As SGT Maupins father said in an interview "I told them when we'd go up to the Pentagon, whether he walks off a plane or is carried off, you're not going to leave him in Iraq like you did those guys in Vietnam," So for us as soldiers we see and are bolstered by the fact that we will not be left behind.

There are two service member still MIA. Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old Iraqi-born reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Mich., who was abducted in Baghdad while visiting his Iraqi wife in 2006 and Navy Capt. Michael Speicher a pilot, has been missing since 1991. I would ask your continued prayers for these men and their families.