This morning, I would like to express my gratitude for the life of a young man named Ian Fishback.
Mr. Fishback, a West Point graduate, who served as a Major in U. S. Army, Special Forces, worked with then-Senator Joseph R. Biden and Senator John McCain to end extensive violations of the Geneva Convention toward civilians detained by U.S. forces in Iraq. The U.S. military had classified detainees in Iraq not as prisoners, which would have protected them from certain harms related to torture, but rather as "persons under control."
As a whistleblower, Major Fishback sought to close that loophole.
The price he paid for that act of conscience was exceptionally high.
It is profiled in detail by the thoughtful journalism of C.J. Chivers in last Sunday's New York Times magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/magazine/ian-fishback.html
It is not clear whether Major Fishback ever learned about his likely classification as a "target of interest," and it appears that C.J. Chivers knows little to nothing about the "target of interest" protocol. But Major Fishback was brilliant enough to put many of the pieces together prior to his suffering a brain injury which he believed to be caused by harmful exposures to EMF radiation.
His death, by an injected overdose of medication within a Hometown Pharmacy outlet, arranged by a caregiving facility called Cornerstone, is now under investigation by the State of Michigan's Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.
Following his death, his family was shocked that the coroner's report characterized him posthumously as having a mental illness with which he had never been diagnosed during his lifetime.
I stand in favor of remembering Major Fishback as an American hero, who, as Ted Kennedy once said of another American hero, "saw wrong and tried to right it .... saw war and tried to stop it."
Major Fishback was a man of honor, of conscience, of courage, of brilliance, of leadership.
President Biden saw that when he first sought to listen to Ian Fishback's concerns as a Senator in 2005.
Major Fishback's subsequent brain injury, illness, and death were a direct result of his efforts to protect the defenseless in Iraq, not a side note.
Today, I simply wish to pay tribute to this young man's courage in defending the human rights of the vulnerable as an American of conscience and integrity.
President Joseph R. Biden recognized that courage when he helped to advance Major Fishback's concerns in Washington, D.C. eighteen years ago.
It would be gratifying to me if, in the future, our American heroes were treated with the honor and respect President Biden, with his characteristic wisdom, extended to this gifted young man.
To Major Fishback: you have my respect, my gratitude, my recognition of the magnitude of your sacrifice, and my ready defense of your memory.
To Major Fishback's family: roses.
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