Sunday, August 14, 2011

Abbas Naama

Video at MSNBC: The Road Back with Tom Brokaw

Tom Brokaw reports a story that follows three families through the war in Iraq. From 2002, before the war in Iraq, until present day, Brokaw chronicles the lives of an American soldier who fought in the war; an Iraqi family who was living under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and an Iraqi American family that returned to Iraq to rebuild their homeland.
Abbas Kareem (Tim) Naama returned to Iraq but has been missing since he was abducted in Baghdad on September 27, 2005.

There are several interviews with Lieutenant Colonel Kate Van Auken (US Army) who I am going to guess is with the Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office (DPMO). In Part 6, she is seen handling flyers, with two brief views of missing Americans, Dean Sadek and Aban Elias.

Additional commentary from the MSNBC producer:

By Justin Balding, Dateline NBC, August 7, 2011
Abbas Naama is one of 14 Americans missing in Iraq.
Related reading

Americans Missing in Iraq
Last updated: August 13, 2011

Monday, August 08, 2011

Missing Men

I somehow missed this article when it first appeared back in May. I honestly can't figure out how I missed it. Anyway...

The author provides two new names and a different spelling for Bob Hamza, which I will add to the chart of Americans Missing in Iraq. Dates, however, continue to remain elusive.

With Withdrawal Looming, Trails Grow Cold for Americans Missing in Iraq
By Jack Healy, New York Times, May 21, 2011

The last Americans missing in Iraq followed disparate paths to an uncertain fate. They arrived from Indiana and North Carolina, Chicago and Denver. They came out of a sense of duty, in search of a paycheck, or hoping to reclaim a homeland they had fled decades earlier.

But the lives of the eight men — seven private contractors and the only American service member who remains unaccounted — are a painful fragment of the war’s legacy, a haunting piece of unfinished business that the military will leave behind when it withdraws by the end of the year. [...]

Numerically speaking, the missing Americans — Jeffrey Ake, Aban Elias, Abbas Kareem Naama, Neenus Khoshaba, Bob Hamze, Dean Sadek, Hussain al-Zurufi and Staff Sgt. Ahmed Altaie — are little more than a footnote in Iraq.