In case you’ve been living under a rock, Soldiers recently found the remains of SSG Keith Maupin, one of four missing Soldiers kidnapped in Iraq. I’ve been closely following the efforts to find SSG Maupin. Maupin disappeared almost four years ago, on April 9, 2004, south of Baghdad when insurgents attacked his convoy using rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.

You know how those that want us to pull out of Iraq use the excuse that Iraqis don’t want us there. We’re hated. We’re loathed. We’re unwelcome “occupiers” of a proud nation. Iraq is still a proud people and have all kinds of reason to hold their head high – and they do. Iraqis are working with US troops more and more each day. Mobile Training Teams (MTT) are paired up with Iraqi defense and civilian personnel training them how to fight, sustain, and maintain a nation. Because of the brilliance and success of the surge Iraqis are doing more to take their country back from insurgents and terrorists. One example of that is the SSG Maupin recovery.

Maupin’s remain were ONLY found because of tips to US Soldiers from Iraqi citizens who feel safe and secure enough to work with now. Fear of retribution from insurgent and AQ elements has been diminished substantially based off personal conversations I’ve personally had with officers and Soldiers on the ground. Maupin was found in a heavily Sunni area – the people who are supposed to hate us, according to the MSM and appeasers.

As you hail and celebrate the recovery of Matthew Maupin, please remember those who are still missing:

Sgt. Ahmed Altaie, also an Army Reserve soldier, was forcibly taken by masked gunmen in a Baghdad neighborhood Oct. 23, 2006, while visiting family. The Army said Altaie had gone on his own outside the fortified Green Zone to see his Iraqi wife, whom he had married before deploying to Iraq, when he disappeared. Altaie, 41, is an Iraqi-born resident of Ann Arbor, Mich.

Spc. Alex Jimenez, 25, and Pvt. Byron Fouty, 19, disappeared after a May 12, 2007, ambush south of Baghdad that also took the lives of seven fellow soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter.

Six of the soldiers were killed at the scene, and the body of a seventh soldier who had been missing since the attack was found May 23 in the Euphrates River.

Jimenez and Fouty are assigned to 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment at Fort Drum, N.Y.

“I want to say this once again to the families of our other captured soldiers in Iraq,” Army Secretary Pete Geren said in a statement. “We will not stop searching for your loved ones.”

And we won’t!! Until they all come home…