THE MIAs—A PORTRAIT OF FRUSTRATION  

He sits and suffers alone!!!

       To most people it is inconceivable and hard to believe that one human being would willfully fetter the body, mind, and spirit of another human being.  Such an act is the height of cruelty, brutality, barbarism, and savagery.  Nonetheless, it does indeed happen.

       After the end of World War II, the Korean War Cease-fire, the end of the Vietnam War, and the end of the Cold War, the communists detained thousands of helpless captives.  The United States Government, rather than press for their release or for information which might lead to an accounting, chose (for fear of ruffling the feathers of the communists) to accept the "dubious word" of those "congenital liars" when they falsely claimed that they had returned all prisoners whom they were holding.  By dint of not aggressively and forcefully pressing the communists for the release of "ALL" living captives and the return of the remains of the deceased, our government left behind thousands of MIAs, betraying and abandoning them to a miserable, agonizing, never-ending existence in a far-off-foreign-hell!!!  Incredible!!!  Shocking!!!  No, not just incredible and shocking, but damned incredible and shocking!!!

       Is the life of our MIAs really so terrible???  Indeed it is!!!  It is difficult, if not impossible, even to imagine just how horrible the life of our MIAs is unless you have personally experienced it!!!  Their days and nights are replete with fear, anxiety, anguish, boredom, disillusionment, frustration, loneliness, misery, pain, and suffering. 

        Never given sufficient food to ease their incessant hunger which gnaws and tears at their stomachs, they are always hungry.  In their haste to get the scanty meal into their empty stomachs, they bite and mutilate the insides of their cheeks.  Not infrequently, their meager portions contain various foreign objects: maggots, worms, small white stones, slivers of wood, large and yellowish toenails with dirt and crud caked on them, etc. Without fail, the obnoxious guards hack up and spit phlegm while the helpless MIAs are attempting to eat the meager, disgusting garbage. Frequently the crude guards spit into the cells toward the caged MIAs, forcing them to dodge the phlegm and to move toward the back of their filthy cubbyholes. 

          Never given enough water to quench their constant thirst or soothe the burning sensation in their dry, parched throats, they are always thirsty.  There are many times when they are forced to go days and days and days without any water at all.

       The MIAs almost always feel ill, fatigued, and sleepy.  All too frequently their bodies are racked with excruciating pain. Their heads ache and they run high fevers, but they have no aspirin.  Their eyes burn and water, and their noses run constantly, but they have no handkerchiefs or Kleenex--they must use the sleeves of their shirt or jacket.  Their throats burn and are raw, but they have no lozenges.  Their lips chap and crack, but they have no soothing lip balm.  Their muscles and joints ache, but there is no Ben Gay to ease the pain.  There is no relief!!!  Medicine and medical care are unavailable and a rarity. 

      The MIAs are denied rest and sleep, especially during the interrogation period which could last from a few months to years.  The interrogation session itself lasts anywhere from several hours to twenty-four hours a day.  At the end of a session, the MIAs are returned to their cruddy, parasite and insect infested cells for thirty minutes or so before the next long session begins.  During the sessions, they must remain standing and are almost always fettered.  Failure to answer satisfactorily the interrogators' questions most always results in a sharp jab from the guard's rifle barrel to the small of the back.  There are some weeks when the unfortunate souls get only five or six hours of sleep for the entire week.  There are times when the captives are interrogated and kept on their feet for seven days and nights.  During this inhumane ordeal the only relief afforded them are a few minutes to gobble down one scanty meal a day and an occasional trip (not always when nature calls and not always daily, but at the whim or discretion of their cruel tormentors) to the latrine.  Very frequently, whether in the interrogation chamber or in their cruddy cells, they are force to wait and attempt to hold back the "call of nature" for countless painful and agonizing hours.  They try with all their might; but, not infrequently, they are made to wait beyond their ability to wait any longer.  When they lose control and crap or urinate all over themselves, they are scolded and humiliated for their lack of control.  Then, of course, they are forced to wallow in their own excrement or urine.  After awhile their underclothes actually rot away and fall off their malodorous and filthy bodies.          

      Not given water to keep themselves clean, their cruddy, filthy bodies become infested with parasites and covered with fungi infections and rashes which cause them unbearable discomfort and excruciating pain.  The parasites crawl all over their bodies.  The hair on their heads, on their legs and arms, under their arms, around their genitals, and even their eyebrows are heavily infested with lice and crabs.  Fungi and other infectious rashes cause their skin to redden, crack, burn, and itch.  If they scratch, the sores become worse.  If they don't scratch, the unrelenting itching almost drives them out of their mind.  

      When they are not being interrogated or "re-educated" and after the interrogation period is over, the MIAs must pass many idle, monotonous, gloomy hours in "solitary confinement."  They wake up daily in their mangy cubbyholes, and nightly they lie down on their hard planks--frustrated, disillusioned, and disheartened--knowing that the morrow offers little hope of ever escaping from their tedious, boring existence.  They ceaselessly pray for relief, but relief is no where in sight.  Nightly they dream of freedom, but morning comes and they find themselves still caged and chained like savage beasts.  They cry out pitifully for help, but no one seems to hear nor answer their mournful pleas.  They yearn for companionship, but they have to settle for the company of spiders, ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, and centipedes.  They crave a thick, juicy steak, but they must settle for wormy, rocky steamed rice served in a dirty mess kit covered with nasal mucus.   

         The most strenuous and nerve racking aspect of the MIAs' life is the isolation: never knowing what is going on, what to expect, or what will happen next.  Their cunning captors keep them weak, helpless, uninformed, and disoriented.  Their sadistic, godless jailers endeavor to make the helpless MIAs feel that their very existence--their fate--rest wholly in their captors' hands.   These unfortunate souls are alone and cut off from the Free World, and they know it.  Their government is not notified of their capture, and their families and loved ones don't know whether they are dead or alive.  Not only are they being subjected to cruel, heartless, barbaric, and inhumane physical and mental tortures, but also they know that even their innocent families are forced to endure emotional and mental harassment and anguish because the communists don't have the decency to list their loved ones as having been captured.  For the MIAs the loneliness, monotony, uncertainty, and  insecurity are overwhelming.  For the families and loved ones of the unfortunate MIAs, the indifference and insensitivity of the United States Government and the vast majority of the American people are painful.  The family members believe, and with an extremely good reason, that the U. S. Government doesn't give a tinker's damn about their missing loved ones and continuously lies to them about doing all humanly possible to learn the truth regarding the fate of the MIAs.  As a matter of fact, our government has done and has accomplished disappointingly little to resolve the MIA/POW Issue.  Our government has not secured the release and return of one single MIA!!!  Consequently, those poor unfortunate souls continue to languish and waste away in filthy foreign hellholes.  [U. S. Government policy regards anyone who unfortunately falls into the hands of hostile forces as EXPENDABLE!!!]  Just ask "hanoi john kerry" and the other self-proclaimed "experts" who served [That is when they could spare a little time, which was indeed seldom.] on the "so-called senate 'select' committee on POW/MIA Affairs."  Sadly though, these self-righteous pseudo-elitists had predetermined that there were no American captives ever left behind; therefore, their efforts were prejudicial and counterproductive.  [In my opinion, this committee of biased politicians should have been named "the senate 'select' committee 'chosen' to pound the final nails into the lids of the coffins of those brave patriots whom they had sent to war and then betrayed, abandoned, left behind to suffer and die a slow agonizing death at the hands of their newly-found commie friends, and ultimately forgot them!!!"]  What these inept, amateurish sluggards did to our missing prisoners-of-war was tantamount to shoveling cruddy foreign dirt on top of their coffin lids and burying them ALIVE!!!     

       Besides being continuously interrogated and harassed, the MIAs are also bombarded with endless hours of political (bulldung) propaganda.  One of the enemy propagandists' favorite lines is that the United States Government is corrupt and that all of our leaders and politicians are self-serving parasites who feed off the labors of the common people.  [I do believe that the aforementioned statement is probably the closest thing to the truth that I heard during my most unpleasant sojourn in that rotten hellhole I call red china.]  Lectured daily on the "virtues" of communism and the "evils" of Capitalism, the MIAs are incessantly admonished that they must be "re-educated if they expected to stay alive.  Every day (non-stop--over and over and over) the crafty, cunning enemy tells the beleaguered MIAs that the U. S. Government and the American people have abandoned them and have even already forgotten that they ever existed. 

             The shameful truth is that they have been betrayed, left behind, abandoned, and forsaken by their very own United States Government, the same government which sent them abroad to fight for freedom and justice against the vile, vicious, tyrannical enemies of the American way of life.  Rather than embarrass the two-faced, double-dealing, prevaricating communists, our "illustrious" [Perhaps "infamous" would be a more appropriate term to describe individuals of their ilk.] elected and appointed officials, politicians, and pseudo-statesmen find it more advantageous, profitable, and tasteful to sacrifice these unfortunate, helpless, and voiceless souls (the MIAs) and sentence them to a never-ending existence in some mangy foreign hellhole at the mercy of sadistic, godless jailers!!!

            Our MIAs are forsaken and forgotten because the vast majority of American people refuse to believe that anyone (even a deceitful, mendacious communist) could be so cruel and heartless as to hold other human beings without notifying their government and to hold onto them for such a prolonged period of time. 

            They are forsaken and forgotten because the vast majority of the American news people don't feel that it benefits them personally to champion the cause of these poor, unfortunate souls.  On the contrary, most of these incompetent sorry excuses for legitimate journalists and newscasters fervently adhere to the misconception that supporting the "STILL MISSING" POWs and MIAs will somehow jeopardize their insignificant, shallow careers. 

         They are forsaken and forgotten because most American people are just too busy and wrapped up in their own private little worlds and cannot trouble themselves to give the deplorable plight of the MIAs a second thought much less become involved in any concerted effort to help them.  I guess that it is much easier, it is much less painful, it is much more convenient to avoid involvement and not to concern oneself with someone else’s problem!!!

        What has come over the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives that their members can sit back idly and allow such a dishonorable and heartless abandonment of our brave, courageous American fighting men who unfortunately fell into the hands of a cruel, sadistic, barbaric, godless enemy???  Do any of them really care???  Oh, perhaps a few do , but I wager that you could count those who do care on one hand.  Could it be that these jerks on Capitol Hill have lost their courage and the will to fight for the legacy of our Founding Fathers???  Have they morphed into such cowardly jackasses that they are now terrified of our enemies and are willing to surrender our priceless blood-bought freedoms rather than to fight to preserve them???  It appears to me that these "sissies" have forgotten the high price paid to establish this Great Free Republic of ours; it appears that they are ignorant regarding what it cost in blood and lives to keep our precious freedoms!!!  Do they value party affiliation and party control (power) more than  protecting and maintaining the personal freedoms of their constituents and of all Americans???  I regret to say that I think they do place far greater value on their "confounded" party than they do on their precious American citizenship!!!  

       What has happened to our American news people that they can look the other way while thousands of their fellow American countrymen have been left behind, abandoned and forgotten by their own government???  Do any of them really care???   Oh, perhaps a few do.  Unfortunately most of these pompous "faux-elitists" are more concerned about placating and appeasing our enemies than they are about the horrendous plight of our missing and unaccounted for prisoners-of-war.  Way too damned many of these "self-proclaimed experts" actually delight in reporting and commenting (No, not reporting and commenting, but rather reading, and not too well at that, from a prompter) on any event which makes our great free nation and our incomparably superior and professional military personnel look bad.  With a liberal, left-wing mainstream news media such as ours and our equally incompetent, commie-loving, crybaby legislators vegetating (rather than working for the good of our still free nation and people) in their plush offices (which by the way are paid for with their constituents' heavily taxed earnings), we here in our beloved and beautiful Free America really don't need any foreign enemies!!!  We have an overabundance  of domestic enemies who are determined to destroy America as we know it!!!   May God Almighty forbid it!!!   

       But, for lack of human decency and Christian charity, they (our betrayed, abandoned, voiceless, and all-but-forgotten MIAs and POWs) stand and oppose their barbaric, cruel, godless, inhumane, and sadistic enemies alone!!!

        Thank God for the MIAs’ families, the veterans organizations, and all those concerned volunteers who care and are doing whatever they can to keep the deplorable plight of our American countrymen before the American public. 

Steve E. Kiba

        Former MIA/POW

       Alleged to be a Political Prisoner/War Criminal by the Red Chinese

      January 12, 1953

to

August 4, 1955

          May GOD continue to bless and protect America, (though we surely don't deserve it, nor do we appreciate all the blessings which HE has already bestowed upon this great nation and her people) and May He heal and awaken us before it becomes too late.  Freedom can not be maintained without sacrificing and without continuing to pay the price however great it might be!!!  And believe me, there is absolutely no greater prized possession than one's personal freedoms, most especially the freedom of religion.

       Wake up my fellow Americans!!!  Don't you realize that apathy, greed, class envy (inciting one group against another), and ignorance are weapons used by our enemies (both foreign and domestic) to undermine and destroy our great "ONE NATION UNDER GOD???"