News from Iraq

Last month, seven active-duty soldiers in Iraq wrote an op-ed about the war there: "The war as we saw it". The link goes to a Salon reprinting of it. The reason Salon asked NY Times permission to use it, is that two of the authors of the op-ed were killed last Monday. One of the authors were wounded in the head already before the op-ed was brought in the NY Times, which raises some questions, as Joan Walsh rightly says:

Tragically, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Murphy, another of the seven authors, was shot in the head in Iraq before the Op-Ed was published and is being treated at the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland. What does it mean that in the last month, three of the seven Op-Ed authors have been gravely wounded in Iraq, two of them fatally? I'm not jumping to any dark theories, though I hope Mora's mother and the other families get answers to all their questions. At minimum, it's a stunning and awful coincidence that should work to focus us on the awful waste of lives in Iraq today. As President Bush prepares another speech Thursday night, more "Stay the course" denial, this time dressed up as an announcement of a troop reduction, let's hope Congress examines the deaths of Omar Mora and Yance Gray and decides: Enough.

I think that there is no need for any dark conspiracy theories. These people were on active duty in a war-zone, and their experiences led them to write an op-ed about how the situation there is worse than it would appear from the US media. Unfortunately, what has happened to them after writing their op-ed, bears this out.

This should lead to politicians to re-evaluate their stance on Iraq, but unfortunately I doubt that it will happen.