The last time I heard of an American prisoner of war in Iraq was Jessica Lynch, which was 5 years ago. It’s hard to believe there are no current American POWs in Iraq, but I never hear about them. What’s the straight dope?
Being held by who? We’re not at war with Iraq. Any Americans being held captive would be abductees being held by insurgents.
There was a Private Matt Maupin who was taken prisoner back in 2004 and identified himself in a video made by his captors. A video made shortly after depicted his execution. The Army called it inconclusive and listed him as missing. They recently recovered his body. He was the only captive that I had heard about since the early stages of the war.
Interesting perspective.
To complete it: Iraqis (or any of the other myriad nationalities fighting) held captive by Americans are enemy combatants.
My point is that there are no POW camps behind enemy lines. There’s not even the equivalent of Guantanamo Bay. Any Americans being held in Iraq are hidden in somebody’s basement by a small group of people who are themselves hiding from the authorities.
It seems to me that the insurgents’ methods of attack are, by nature, unlikely to result in POWs. Their primary weapon is the IED, which obviously won’t capture anyone. Their secondary tactics are, as far as I can tell, sniper attacks or hit-and-run ambushes, which are unlikely to result in any American soldiers being captured.
Even if, by chance, some insurgents wound up in a situation where they could take an American soldier prisoner, I think it would be hard for them to do it, because they lack any facility to hold him.
I’m not so sure. There are plenty of ratholes in Sadr City to hide a GI if the bad guys capture him or her, God forbid. They might try some extortion or propaganda gambit, but I doubt it’d do them much good, and the U.S. would never stop looking.
According to this website: http://www.aiipowmia.com/stats.html , it would appear that there are currently three uniformed service members (all US Army) listed as “Missing - captured”.
For civilians, it says this:
This CNN article confirms the data: Forces: U.S. & Coalition/POW/MIA - Special Reports