The remains of the first American casualty of the first Gulf War have been found, the Pentagon revealed on August 2. U.S. navy Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher had been shot down in the open hours of the Gulf War but his fate remained a mystery. It wasn't clear if he had died in the crash or if he had been taken captive.
His remains were discovered in the desert sands of Anbar province by military researchers acting upon information handed to them by an Iraqi. According to the Pentagon. the Iraqi had disclosed that a number of other local Iraqis had witnessed the plane crash and that a group of Bedouins had buried the pilot. Led to the burial place by a number of witnesses, the U.S. military team found a jaw bone which matched the dental records of Captain Speicher.
The Iraqi government under the leadership of Saddam Hussein persistently refused to discuss the case, thus fueling the theory that Captain Speicher had been captured. President Clinton also added to the belief Captain Speicher was alive when he declared the U.S. had new information and changed the pilot's status from "killed in action" to "missing in action". In autumn 2002, as the U.S. prepared for a second war in Iraq, the navy again without explanation changed his status to "missing/captured," leading some critics to speculate the Bush administration was trying to build a case for invasion.
