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News
9/12/07 Soldiers Who Signed Anti-War Op-Ed Piece Die in Iraq (CNN.com)
Two U.S. soldiers whose signatures appeared on an op-ed piece in The New York Times critical of the war in Iraq were
among seven Americans killed in a truck accident outside of Baghdad. Staff Sgt. Yance Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora were members
of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, based at Forg Bragg, North Carolina.
Gray, Mora and five other soldiers died Monday when their truck overturned near the Iraqi capital. Gray and Mora
were among seven soldiers, mostly seargeants, who wrote the op-ed piece that appeared in the Times on August 19.
It called the prospects of U.S. success "far-fetched" and said the progress being reported was being "offset by failures elsewhere."
"Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with
a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence," they wrote. "When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis
is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages."
Another of the signers of the Times article, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Murphy, was shot in the head a week before the article
appeared but survived.
9/12/07 Patraeus Under Heavy Fire (Time/CNN.com)
It took three hearings before General David Petraeus finally got asked the most important question: Is the Iraq war,
a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee inquired at Tuesday afternoon's session, "making America safer?" Petraeus,
the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, was uncharacteristically uncertain. "Sir," he said, "I don't know, actually." For many
watching, that answer was a stark indictment of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war over the past four years, and
the logic behind it. It may also have been taken as a slap in the face by family members of the 3,774 Americans who have made
the ultimate sacrifice in this conflict.
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