Look what the cat dragged in

Babble on.

The JTF2 explosives expert who went AWOL and disappeared into the far east a couple of years back has turned up in Bangkok:

Two years ago, Special Forces Sgt. Montgomery Paisley cleaned out his bank account, sorted out his affairs, and vanished after taking a commercial flight to Thailand.

A 16-year veteran of the military, the explosives expert had an exemplary record and no signs of personal problems when he disappeared after landing in the southeast Asian country on Aug. 1, 2003.

During an extensive probe, Canadian and Thai investigators found no trace of Paisley. Last week, he turned up at the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok after 21 months.

Where he'd been in the interim remained a mystery Thursday.

It will be interesting to find out what motivated him to abandon his life here. Here's my guess: nothing. I'll bet he did this because he could. He had the training and the ability to disappear, so when something in his life threw him the sort of curveball the rest of us simply deal with and move on, he used it as an excuse to live out a Jason Bourne fantasy.

Let me reiterate that this is just a guess. I don't know this fellow from Adam - he might well have had a serious life-crisis event that none of us knew about, or a clinical psychological problem that went undiagnosed. If that's the case, you'll see me eat these words.

But my money says, while some feeble excuse will be put out there for public consumption after the shrinks interview him to death ("He reacted adversely to stress in both his personal and professional life"), we'll never get a truly credible and understandable rationale for his decision to pick up and leave.

Babble off.