The Irony is Unreal!
Remember this editorial from the New York Times which was printed a few weeks ago? The piece was entitled"The War As We Saw It". The editorial received coverage all around the world.
Well, unfortunately it has been confirmed that 2 of the 7 soldiers who authored the article have been killed in Iraq- Sgt. Omar Mora, and Sgt. Yance Gray. A third soldier from The Iraq Seven has been severely wounded in Iraq. SEE REPORT HERE.
The information regarding Mora was first broken here on Mirror On America late on Monday, September 10th (September 11th in Iraq). Someone sent me a strange, anonymous note announcing the death via the comments section...and they provided certain information that only someone acquainted with Mora would have known. But I withheld the information & didn't go with the story (I deleted the anonymous note) out of an abundance of concern that the family may not have been notified yet. I also deleted a message requesting information which I posted on Daily Kos (I deleted the article after a couple of minutes). I suspect that one of the soldiers from Iraq left the note. This was worse than I thought. I was not aware of the situation with Yance Gray or with the 3rd soldier from the group.
This ordeal just drives home the point that they were making in their editorial. There is no stronger or more honorable way that their point of view could be driven home.
The irony of this story is just unbelievable, especially coming on September 11th, and over the same 2 day period as the Petreaus report. Another sad twist in this story was the fact that the soldiers from the group... The Iraq Seven... were due to return home soon. This was one of the reasons why they chose to write the editorial when they did.
I now know that these guys have been reading my site... And yes... I am coining the phrase, The Iraq Seven. If you go back to Vietnam, there were also famous groups of soldiers like The Iraq Seven who began speaking up towards the end of that conflict.
This is the kind of story that can shake you to the core. My thoughts & prayers go out to the families.
This is a perfect time for me to take a few days off from the blogging thing. This stuff can really consume you. My mind is numb at the moment.
________________________
Additional Report
Report from Houston Chronicle
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
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4 comments:
I read this over on DailyKos last night, but I figured that you would handle it.
Shake you to the core is a good phrase to use, AI.
Piss me off to no end is another one.
I know that I get slammed for this, but I'll say it again.
I want our troops home. NOW.
YESTERDAY.
Don't give me the BS of 'what will happen if we leave?'
To be honest, I don't give a rat's ass about what will happen WHEN WE LEAVE.
Did we create it?
Yes.
But, not one more American soldier's life should be spilled for:
1. Neo-cons
2. George Bush's 'legacy'.
3. Oil Companies
4. Haliburton
Can't anyone convince me otherwise that any of these reasons aren't why we're still there.
The MSM of course, ignores the REASON why SEPTEMBER was chosen as the ' deciding month'.
IT'S BECAUSE THE OIL COMPANIES WERE TRYING TO LOCK IN THOSE CONTRACTS, PEOPLE.
Come on.
Smarten up.
This debacle has nothing to do with anything but OIL and WAR PROFITEERS.
Let our troops come home.
If they fall into an unfettered Civil War, so be it.
Let them drag the Iranians and the Saudis into it. Maybe if they're so busy fighting one another, they'll be too occupied to think of ways to kill us.
Cold, but true.
Thanks for the post, AI. It was on point.
AI,
I was checking back to see if you were going to comment on Obama's Iraq speech today. What you thought of it.
I just got in...
I have not had time to see the speech but I did hear parts of an interview that he did with NPR earlier today.
I will have to take a look at the actual speech that you are referring to.
He admitted in the interview that he was not calling for a complete pullout. He wants some troops to remain indefinitely, to do hit and run attacks inside a country that is supposed to be sovereign. Hmmm..
He never mentioned whether this would be with the permission and/or blessing of the Iraqi government.
This falls right in line with what I have been saying for a long time... See my comments in the post entitled "Why Iraq Withdrawal Talk is All Lies"...and my recent comments regarding the Petraeus testimony (see post with the embedded video). I stated that both Republicans and Democrats will keep this Country tied up in Iraq for years... despite what the Democrats are saying now. The Democrats are saying whatever they think the public wants to hear at the moment in order to win the election.
Also read the post entitled "Why The Democrats Won't Save Us".
I will be blogging again full force later this week...probably the weekend.
I don't know about a complete retreat, although the U.S. should not have invaded in the first place.
But I see the need for a 2-3 year phased plan to get the number of troops down to 20,000-30,000. And then lets re-evaluate where we are at that time. There will have to be thousands of troops there for years to support the Iraqi military, the security forces, to protect the U.S. embassy (have you heard about the embassy debacle? They splurged on one of the most elaborate and most expensive embassies ever imagined...in the middle of a warzone), and for special operations and air support units. But certainly within 5 years, the Iraqi's should be able to handle their own business.
But then we have the special bi-partisan commission, led by a retired General (General Jones) that stated that the Iraqi security forces were so inept and corrupt that they needed to be rebuilt from scratch... that was a whammy! It just shows how screwed up this whole thing was from the beginning.
I meant to blog about this special commission on Iraq...but I have not had the time to tackle it. If you can find the video...or an article...feel free to post.
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