Unbelievable! When this first went down, I thought this guy was as good as dead. Great news. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 2, 2004, 10:41AM U.S. hostage Thomas Hamill escapes Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq - American hostage Thomas Hamill, kidnapped three weeks ago in an insurgent attack on his convoy, was found by U.S. forces today south of Tikrit after he apparently escaped from his captors, the U.S. military said. An official said he was in "good health." Hamill, 43, of Macon, Miss., was discovered when he approached a U.S. patrol from the 2nd Battalion 108th Infantry, part of the New York National Guard, in the town of Balad, 35 miles south of Tikrit, a spokesman for U.S. troops in Tikrit said. He identified himself, then led the patrol to the house where he had been held captive. The unit surrounded the house and captured two Iraqis with an automatic weapon, said the spokesman, Maj. Neal O'Brien. Hamill, a truck driver working for a subsidiary of the contractor Halliburton, had a gunshot wound to his left arm that appeared to be infected, and was flown by helicopter to Bagdad, O'Brien said. Video images of Hamill released by his captors a day after his abduction showed his left arm in a sling, suggesting he was wounded during the attack on his convoy. "Mr. Hamill apparently escaped from a building," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad, saying Hamill was in "good health." "He has spoken to his family. He is now ready to get back to work." In Macon, Hamill's wife, Kellie, said she received a call about 5:50 a.m. telling her that her husband had been found alive. She said it was "the best wakeup call I've ever had." Kellie said one of the first things she did was to wake up their children. "There has been a lot of praying and I am so grateful to everybody," she said. "We're all so relieved, so excited." She said she had no idea when her husband would be returning home or when she would be able to see him. "I want everybody know he's been found," she added. "I'm going to be shouting it from the rooftops." There had been no word on his fate since the video released on April 10, which showed Hamill standing in front of an Iraqi flag. A spokesman heard on the video threatened to kill him within 12 hours unless the United States lifted the Marine siege of the city of Fallujah. Hamill re-appeared about 50 miles north of the Abu Ghraib region, west of Baghdad, where he was snatched on April 9 during an attack on a supply convoy he was driving in. His abduction came amid a flare-up of kidnappings of foreigners during the intense violence that began in early April. Up to 40 people from a wide range of nationalities were abducted, though most were later freed. One hostage, an Italian, was executed by his captors, who filmed the slaying and sent a video to Arab television stations. An American soldier, Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, remains in the hands of kidnappers, as do three other Italian security guards. Maupin and Hamill were in the same convoy that came under attack on the western outskirts of Baghdad, one of many amid an insurgent campaign against supply routes around the capital. The April 9 attack had a particularly heavy toll: besides Hamill and Maupin, six other employees of the Halliburton subsidary KBR -- formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root -- and another U.S. solder were missing. The bodies of four of the KBR employees were later found in a shallow grave near the attack. The body of the soldier, Sgt. Elmer Krause of Greensboro, N.C., was also found and identified on April 23. Two days after the attack, video footage given by insurgents to Arab television showed the bloodied bodies of two other Western civilians who had been seen being dragged out of a car during the same attack. Hamill -- a dairy farmer who signed on with KBR in Iraq to pay off debts -- was also filmed as he was being abducted. The insurgents allowed an Australian camera crew to film him in the back seat of the gunmen's car. Hamill identified himself before the car sped off, wisking him away. The next day, the Arab television station al-Jazeera showed the video of Hamill standing in front of an Iraqi flag. "Our only demand is to remove the siege from the city of mosques," a spokesman said in the tape. "If you don't respond within 12 hours ... he will be treated worse than those who were killed and burned in Fallujah."
I wanna know the real story behind the scenes now. On how they treated him, and the other hostages...
Great news in an ocean of bad news coming out of Iraq for a change. I would certainly hate to be the guy who was supposed to be guarding him. I can't imagine the Iraqi insurgents will forgive letting one of their hostages escape.
I agree excellent news. Nothing to debate, but a question. It is sort of sad the guy had to go to Iraq to make deent money. However, why do we need truck drivers from the US? Can't we hire Iraqis at $1 per hr, instead of using paying Halliburton, who he worked, for exhorbitant money? That is wierd.
I thought you liberals were just complaining about the outsourcing of jobs. Now you are advocating it? FLIP FLOP The answer to your question is that Halliburton has considerable expertise in reconstruction efforts such as this. For as much as you demonize Halliburton, they are a very respected company in the industry that employs a large body of highly skilled and professional workers.
For one thing, the cargo he was hauling is pretty important stuff. Had we hired Iraquis to do it, how do you tell the guys who just want a job from a member of the insurency who may seek to do harm?
Glynch's question would be a legitimate one if this were a year ago when the hype machine and transforming the ME talk was in high gear. Sadly, Refman's answer is legitimate now and is yet another fact that puts the lie to the administration.
I bet that's one time where those guys might feel they are better off getting captured than being left to the mercies of their comrades in the insurgency after letting Hamill escape.
No doubt. I wonder what kind of heinous suicide mission they would have forced them to embark on as punishment in exchange for not castrating them or killing their families.
So in other words you think its a good thing that Americans should be doing incredibly dangerous jobs where there might get killed, kidnapped, injured and have their bodies dragged through the streets rather than hiring some locals to do it at a few cents to the dollar? I for one understand why KBR is hiring Americans to do this type of work because of the danger of hiring Iraqis who could be part of the insurgency and deliberately sabotage or steal the supplies they are shipping but this seems rather weak portraying this as some liberal flip flop on outsourcing and I'm personally not even against outsourcing.
