Two Soldier-NYT-OpEd-Authors Dead in Iraq

It is being reported at the group blog Daily Kos that two of the seven soldiers who wrote the August 19, 2007 New York Times op-ed piece criticizing the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy have been killed in Iraq.

Daily Kos writer Brandon Friedman reports:

Yance T. Gray and Omar Mora died Monday in a vehicle accident in Baghdad. The AP has reported on Yance Gray here, and KHOU, a Houston-area TV station has reported on Omar Mora here. Their families have been notified.

I have confirmed through a source in Iraq that these are indeed the same soldiers who penned the op-ed piece.

Gray and Mora, along with five others serving in Iraq, had written these words last August:

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

To show you an example of how much the right-wing values the opinions of their own brave fellow military personnel, see this August comment from the Free Republic about the New York Times op-ed by a former U.S. infantryman, MNJohnnie:

"Curious, what was the political orientation of these “Soldiers” before they went to Iraq? Who is paying the bills for them to go out and propagandize like this? Could it be they are just the latest in a long line of Democrat Party propaganda stooges?
Amazing how the same people who are so cynical about commerical marketing fall hook line and sinker for this short of political marketing.

But even if they are sincere, which I doubt, they have an ego centric view based on their tiny slice of the battle field. Nothing surprising here that they happened to be in a crappy part of Iraq. However, to look out your window and claim you now understand how the whole world works is absurd and childish. Yet that is what these clowns do.

Interesting isn’t it that these clowns get coverage from the NY Times, yet these guys don’t. Curious, what was the political orientation of these “Soldiers” before they went to Iraq. Who is paying?

I'd assure this bitterly partisan commentator that these troops who he considered to be "absurd childish egocentric clowns" will never be paid enough to get their lives back...lives they sacrificed for our nation in this war that they dared to criticize.