Posted on 04/25/2003 5:28:22 AM PDT by FryingPan101
It may take congressional hearings to determine what happened during the attack March 23 in which nine members of the 507th Maintenance Company were killed, six were taken prisoner and four were wounded in southern Iraq, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes said Thursday.
Reyes, an El Pasoan and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he plans to follow up on the military's investigation into the ambush which happened four days after the war began. The 507th of Fort Bliss was part of a supply convoy when it encountered Fedayeen fighters.
"I think we're going to have some hearings on lessons learned from the war in Iraq," Reyes said. "We have some questions to answer. For example, did we overestimate our abilities and underestimate the Iraqis, in that we expected them to give up and surrender in massive numbers? Did we not take into account that they would attack our supply lines?"
At the Pentagon, officials said the ambush will be investigated in detail.
"The investigation into the ambush will be thorough and take all information into account," said Lt. Daniel D. Hetlage, Pentagon spokesman. "It will, therefore, be some time before (it) is complete."
Military officials have not yet given an official accounting of the attack. But some of the released POWs have told reporters that the attack "wasn't a little ambush" and that the firefight was fierce.
Officials at first said the 507th had taken a wrong turn and was ambushed. Later, Reyes said the 507th had fallen behind after fixing stalled vehicles and was catching up to a huge convoy heading north to Baghdad when the soldiers were attacked.
The ambush made international news when five members of the 507th were shown on Arab television. Several bodies were also shown. Immediately after the ambush, an investigation was launched by the Defense Department to determine whether some of the soldiers had been executed.
Six members of the 507th were taken prisoner. Five were held captive for 21 days before being released on April 13 near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit. The sixth, Pfc. Jessica Lynch, was rescued April 1.
Reyes said he met briefly with five of the ex-POWs on Wednesday at Beaumont Army Medical Center before they were released to their families. "I said hello, and talked to them for five to 10 minutes, and told them how this whole community had banded together behind them," he said.
For former POW Spc. Joseph Hudson, Thursday was a day to spend with his wife and daughter in El Paso. "I know they were having pizza in the afternoon," said Phyllis Hudman, the Alamogordo soldier's mother-in-law. "Everything is going pretty well. He had some loose ends to tie up at Fort Bliss, but for the most part, he just wants some family time without all the hullabaloo. I think (all the POWs) want that. ... In a very short time, they went from being kids, to being prisoners of war, to being heroes."
But the quiet won't last long. Hudson, his wife, Natalie, and daughter, Cameron, will be the grand marshals for a parade May 3 in Alamogordo to honor him and the airmen at Holloman Air Force Base who served in the war.
Fort Bliss is helping shield the former POWs from the news media by assigning military spokespersons to each.
The former POWs were released Wednesday after completing medical checkups. They will report for duty at Fort Bliss once their 30 days of leave are up.
Doesn't congress have something better to do?
Congress isn't doing anything here, Reyes(D) is. He's working on his constituents for the next election.
This particular Congressman, is a grandstander. Lately he has been helping the Senate keep Miguel Estrada from being confirmed.
Of course, this moron is a Demoncrat. So he has to personally go on a taxpayer-funded "fact finding" mission to "discover" (invent) reasons as to why the Bush-led military operation "screwed up".
Just to put this guy's motives in perspective, here is the very first paragraph of the opening statement on his official government home page:
"Like many Americans, I have raised questions about whether military action at this time is the best way to disarm Saddam Hussein and whether we have exhausted every other alternative."
Another retarded Leftist rat in Congress!!!
It's all for politics.
So what's the truth here? Did the fall behind and try to catch up? Take a wrong turn? Both? Is Reyes obfuscating?
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