Two of the NYT Seven die in Iraq

September 12, 2007

About a month ago, the NYT published an op-ed from seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division. The piece, “The War as We Saw It,” was a sweeping condemnation of everything we’ve heard of late from the Kristol-McCain-Lieberman-O’Hanlon-Pollack crowd.

As these seven troops explained, U.S. forces are an unwelcome occupying force, the U.S. mission is built on bogus assumptions, and “recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable” is grossly exaggerated. The authors didn’t just swing through the Green Zone for a few days as part of a carefully-scripted tour; this was the perspective of active-duty soldiers in Iraq.

Tragically, two of the seven died this week.

Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance Gray died Monday in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, two of seven U.S. troops killed in the incident which was reported just as Gen. David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress in the “surge.” The names have just been released. […]

Mora, 28, hailed from Texas City, Texas, and was a native of Ecuador, who had just become a U.S. citizen. He was due to leave Iraq in November and leaves behind a wife and daughter. Gray, 26, had lived in Ismay, Montana, and is also survived by a wife and infant daughter.

The accident in Iraq occurred when a cargo truck the men were riding in overturned.

One of the other five authors of the Times piece, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head while the article was being written. He was expected to survive after being flown to a military hospital in the United States.

As TP noted, “The soldiers’ courage to speak out has helped change the debate.”

In yesterday’s Senate hearing, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) read from the soldiers’ op-ed. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) also referenced the op-ed, challenging Petraeus’s rosy assessments:

HAGEL: By the way, I assume you read the New York Times piece two weeks ago — seven NCOs in Iraq, today, finishing up 15 month commitments. Are we going to dismiss those seven NCOs? Are they ignorant? They laid out a pretty different scenario, General, Ambassador, from what you’re laying out today.

Mora’s stepfather said that Mora believed the “situation in Iraq was desperate” and was sad that children in Iraq were “having to live” with the war going on. His mother said that Mora, who was on his second tour of duty, was supposed to be coming home in November.

Hey, there’s just a bunch of NCO’s and the backbone of our army. Who cares what they think?

  • So two more brave and worthwhile Americans are dead and where has that gotten this nation? Anyone feel any safer because of it?

    And two more widows and orphans are created. That’s republican family values in action yet again. … But at least Sam Brownback’s political honor remains intact, and it didn’t even cost him a scatch.

  • And what is it, again, that they died for? Was it for you or for me? Was it for their country? For the Iraqis?

    What did they die for? Freedom? Whose freedom? Ours? I don’t think so, not when it seems there is a daily incursion and assault on our rights in the name of national security. The Iraqis’ freedom? Last I checked, the evil dictator had been captured, tried, convicted and hung, and millions of Iraqis went to the polls and voted in a new, constitutional government – if we liberated them, aren’t they already free? Am I missing something here?

    I don’t think so. But two women will be missing their husbands, permanently, one little girl may have some memory of her father, and one will only know him through stories and pictures. What will those women tell their daughters when they ask – and they will – “Why did Daddy have to die?”

    I’d say that maybe if Bush had to look these little girls in the eye and answer their questions, maybe he would understand how wrong all of this is, but I know that he would say something that translates to these men having died because of all the other soldiers who died before them. By this logic, the mounting toll of death after death after death will keep growing, because there is a belief that keeping others from ending up in flag-draped coffins does a disservice to those who already have.

    It seems to me that any one of those soldiers who have died in this war of choice would not want one more soldier to die in his or her name. That was no doubt the impetus behind the op-ed in the first place – that they have already seen too many of their fellow soldiers die, or go home with terrible, life-changing wounds – and wanted to do what they could to bring the dying to an end.

    Rest in peace.

  • Phil Ochs, circa mid-1960’s, Nothing has changed

    SAD AND SILENT SONG OF A SOLDIER

    And the flag draped coffins are a sailin’ home
    And the waves are watching as the engine drones
    As the ship draws near, hear the bugle moan
    The sad and silent song of a soldier

    With a hero’s greeting we will welcome him,
    With hero’s speeches we will honor him,
    With a hero’s ending we will bury him,
    That’s the sad and silent song of a soldier.

    And comfort his family with a telegram,
    We regret to inform you we have lost a man,
    But we gave him the highest medal of the land,
    That’s the sad and silent song of a soldier.

    We know what an awful price he had to pay,
    But the enemy was contained for another day,
    We trained him well, but he would have wanted it that way,
    That’s the sad and silent song of a soldier.

    Oh, the weary wounded they wait by his side,
    Wondering why they hadn’t also died,
    the picture of victory on its pride,
    That’s the sad and silent song of a soldier.

    And the flag is at half mast wet with foreign rain,
    Ignored by the stranger he had helped to train,
    To him it was his duty to them again,
    That’s the sad and silent song of a soldier.

    At Arlington he’s lowered down without a pause,
    And his native land welcomes him with open jaws,
    And the tombstone reads such a noble cause,
    That’s the sad and silent song of a soldier.

    Now a moment of silence for the broken man,
    While the president proudly crows “we’ll never bend”,
    And cheers their replacements marching off again,
    That’s the sad and silent song of a soldier.

    And the flag draped coffins are a sailin’ home,
    And the waves are a watchin’ as the engines drone,
    As the ship draws near, hear the bugle moan
    The sad and silent song of a soldier.

  • We really have to pick up our assault on the pro-war forces. As Scott Ritter said, “If you want to be anti-war, that means you have to be in conflict with those who are pro-war”

    Step one: We need workday civil disobedience, not just Saturday kumbaya stuff. I’m writing to a few local organizer friends as I write this. Please do you part too.

  • I just hope those soldiers did not die because they “offended” someone. My radar goes up when so many of a very small group die after giving an interview critical of the war.

    So sad. American troops should not even BE in Iraq — it was an illegal attack, invasion, and occupation.

    Somebody oughta’ kidnap Bush and Cheney, strap a parachute on ’em, and shove ’em out over the middle of Iraq. Then they can explain to the Iraqis why the US is there.

  • It’s easy to see this as just a cooincidence or another tragedy of war, but without knowing the circumstances of the ‘accident’ we should err on the side of skepticism. If the Tillman and the Welch coverups were total fabrications, why isn’t this? I wouldn’t put anything past either the military or the regime at this point.

    I said at the time they published their piece that I thought all seven would pay a heavy price. Have two now paid that price, and is there still more to be paid?

  • And what is it, again, that they died for? Was it for you or for me? Was it for their country? For the Iraqis?

    They died for an ugly, petulant little man’s ego. They died for a group of Keyboard Kommandos who cheer on war without ever being close to it or knowing what it is outside of video games and movies. They died for the stupidity and the gullibility of an American public that still contains people who believe that Iraqi forces orchestrated 9/11. They died for a group of corporations that have benefitted mightily from the conquest and occupation of Iraq.

    And when this all shakes out what will they have ultimately died for? An Iraq that will probably be a theocratic state, allied with Syria and Iran with probably at least two generations of people who despise and loathe the US with a red hot fury that is not even comprehensible to middle-class Americans tapping away at keyboards on the Internet. That’s if we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky, they will have died for a regional war stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and all the chaos that war will bring.

  • They say the care but by tomorrow they will be forgotten. It’s tragic to call their deaths “heroic” rather than sacrifices to Bush’s war profiteers or Brownback’s hypocritic honor. Wear is the honor in wasting lives to save face. I feel sorrow and anger that these talking heads will not bring the soldiers home, that Bush is forcing them to fight and die policing a civil war, and in spite of these soldiers pleas for someone to start protecting them by withdrawing them from harm’s way, we get power point presentations on how we need to continue this mistake. These soldiers had a face and a life and a voice and we failed to protect them. Sorrow and anger are equating to determination to end this occupation.

  • Pingback:   On the subject of the 2 soldiers that wrote NYT article dying… - The Detroit Times

  • They were due home at the beginning of November — at the end of their 15 months tours. If the military hadn’t been stretched so thin, their tours would have been 12 months. Ie they’d have been home now, not in Baghdad and the whole thing of whether it was an honest to god accident or another Tillman would have been moot.

    Pox on Bush/Cheney and their cocky wargames; just thinking about them gives me a bile reflux.

  • Maybe Webb could re-introduce the bill about limiting the length of tours and extending the length of home stay between tours and call it Mora-Grey bill. That could bbe done independently of the concerted effort to stop the occupation entirely and woulld serve our military in the future.

  • Anne, thank you for your words. Omar was my cousin and will be greatly missed. No matter what he died for, he is our hero. He loved his country which he just became a citizen just before his death.

    His daugther Jordan does have great memories of him. We will help to keep those memories alive.

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