3 rescued US hostages arrive safely in Texas
 

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By ELIZABETH WHITE

Three American hostages rescued from leftist guerillas in Colombia arrived safely in Texas late Wednesday and were taken to a hospital, where they were expected to reunite with their families and undergo tests.

The U.S. military contractors -- Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell -- were held for five years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Their plane landed at Lackland Air Force Base shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday. The men then quickly boarded two helicopters headed to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where they landed a short time later.

Ingrid Betancourt, who was seized while campaigning for president six years ago, was also freed Wednesday, as were 11 Colombian police and soldiers.

The Americans, all wearing olive green flight suits, exited the back end of an Air Force C-17 with little fanfare, surrounded by several other people.

Their drug-surveillance plane went down in the rebel-held Colombian jungle in February 2003. Long before their rescue, the three had become the longest-held American hostages in the world, according to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.

I'm glad they got those guys back and that they are alive. I remember when their plane went down and last I heard they were assumed dead. If it's the same guys I'm thinking of, they were based out of Patrick AFB here in Florida.

I knew the head guy of that operation and he was going to hire me on as a pilot if I went into the Army Reserves to get my pilot training. That was back before 9/11 and the Reserves wouldn't put me in pilot training because they said I was too old, so that ended that.

Would of been a hell of a exciting job though, because at the time they were talking about giving them A10 fighters because they were getting shot at so much. Would have been the only civilian operation to use military fighters.

We are running a so called under the radar war in Columbia with the govt their using civilian contractors so the US military can claim no involvement officially.

This is great news. I can't believe how well this operation was carried out.

We used to have boots on the ground, back in 1998 through 2000, but when our soldiers where on ground, they were being protected by 100 Columbian Regular Army. The columbian army was clearly told that not a single US soldier could get hurt.

Good to see, welcome home

Yea I know but since then, the govt has turned to private contractors to take the place of US soldiers for the CIA. Which I think is eventually going to come back and bite us in the ass one of these days. It's one thing to use private contractors in a support fashion like what these 3 guys were doing. However it's a totally different when they are putting essentially hired guns in there to fight.

The govt doesn't want to be offically involved so they are letting the CIA put Mercs in there to do the fighting.

Good news!

this is an amazing story! Great news!

That is good to hear

Holy shit held hostage in columbia for 5 years and they were released alive?

wtf how did they manage that.

I guess they're more valuable alive than dead...:helpme

It's hard to believe, at least for me, that those covert operations actually happen, and work! I wonder how long the infiltrators were hanging out with the FARC...But, I guess that's the only way to do it! Guerilla warfare...Not a lot of winners! Like the freakin' Democratic Republic of the Congo...They're in DEEP shit :-(

thats some real life call of duty shit right there

That prisoner at the top of the ramp... Pretty big... Can I get 2 tacos de carne asada? Oh, and if you could get me a hooker... Not really big titties... But not too small either.... I don't know... Looks like they were well treated. All returned in great shape, two thumbs up.
(Next time, have like 5 or 10 dollars to pay the cop that stopped you. Hard lesson learned)

that's good...

I think they got some powerful friends

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