Behind Enemy Lines

It's staggeringly outrageous that we're talking about a bad joke in America when we just abandoned one of our own soldiers on the battlefield. Let's be very clear about this. A Shiite militia group captured a US soldier. Countries GO TO WAR over something like this. We set up checkpoints and blockades and instituted curfews in order to find him. The Iraqi government took the militia's side. And we acceeded to their demands and withdrew before finding our soldier. An American was left behind enemy lines yesterday.

I have to give it up to conservative Andrew Sullivan for being on the right side on this:

The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing. The soldier appears to be of Iraqi descent who is married to an Iraqi woman. Who authorized abandoning him to the enemy? Who is really giving the orders to the U.S. military in Iraq? These are real questions about honor and sacrifice and a war that is now careening out of any control. They are not phony questions drummed up by a partisan media machine to appeal to emotions to maintain power.

And where, by the way, is McCain on this? Silent on Cheney's "no-brainer" on waterboarding. Silent recently on Iraq. But vocal - oh, how vocal - on Kerry. It tells you something about what has happened to him. And to America.

This is a scandal. America cannot look for its own soldiers in Iraq. Anyone who looks at this and does not understand the implications needs to look again. Iraqi MILITIAS are in control of our military positions.