Pot shots

A US Army translator has been kidnapped in Baghdad.

A U.S. soldier in Baghdad was reported missing late Monday, and residents said American forces sealed the central Karadah district and were conducting door-to-door searches. Other reports claimed he was an Army translator of Iraqi descent and was abducted.

A military official in Washington said the missing service member was a translator and that the initial report was he may have been abducted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not cleared for release.

An employee at Baghdad's al-Furat TV, which was raided by American forces earlier Monday, said the U.S. forces conducting the search told him they were looking for an abducted American officer of Iraqi descent.

The employee said U.S. soldiers and Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the government's national security adviser who went to the station during the raid, told him the missing officer had left to join family members in Baghdad's Karadah district. It wasn't immediately possible to clarify the reports.

The officer's wife, also an Iraqi-American, was reportedly in the capital visiting family, according to the reports passed on by the al- Furat employee. He refused to allow use of his name fearing retribution.

Please pray for this soldier's safe return.

As AP and Michelle Malkin note, this is only the most recent instance of US forces being kidnapped or gone missing.

The last time any U.S. soldiers were reported missing was in June, when one was killed in an insurgent attack at a checkpoint by a Euphrates River canal, 12 miles south of Baghdad. The two soldiers listed as missing had been abducted during the attack and later found dead, their bodies brutalized, the military said. One of the soldiers had been beheaded.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for killing the soldiers, and said the successor to terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had "slaughtered" them, according to a Web statement that could not be authenticated.

In another case, Sgt. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, is still missing in action. He disappeared in April 2004 in an insurgent attack on a fuel convoy west of Baghdad. One private contractor also remains missing.

Separately, Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, an Arabic translator, faces two desertion charges after Navy investigators concluded he fled Camp Fallujah in Iraq in June 2004 and then failed to arrive at his base in Camp Lejeune, N.C., in January 2005. Hassoun is still missing.

Then note what Michelle says-

One of two things may be going on here--an abduction or a desertion (like the Wassef Ali Hassoun case).

I guess that's true, but do we need to speculate? Michelle says nothing beyond this, she did however link to a prior post on the case of Wassef Ali Hassoun. Whether Michelle believes its an abduction or not, her link/reminder is an unnecessary pot shot at someone serving our country in a very dangerous place. Michelle is out of place here, and while not as bad as this prior episode of hers with William Buckley, just re-inforces my growing belief that she her strong views on Islam(and other topics) sometimes lead to out of line attacks on or innuendo about people. Was it really necessary for Michelle to make the comparison between the translator and Hassoun?

We all(TFM included) tend to criticize without thinking if we could be unnecessarily hurting someone. Tell me what you think.

Others blogging about the kidnapping- Blue Star, Morning Coffee, Lorie at Wizbang,
Linked to- Right Wing Nation, The Random Yak,