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The War as They Saw It

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from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, at 1:22 PM ET

Two military press releases (below and on the following page) describe the deaths of seven soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division in a truck-rollover accident outside Baghdad earlier this week. Similar notices appear almost daily on the Pentagon Web site. What's unusual about these is that just last month, two of the seven men killed, Staff Sgt. Yance Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora, co-authored and published (with five other soldiers) a controversial opinion piece in the New York Times detailing their perspectives on the Iraq conflict under the headline, "The War as We Saw It." Yesterday the Times followed up on the op-ed with a death announcement. (Click here to read a tribute by Slate's Fred Kaplan.)

Gray and Mora both leave widows and small daughters. The other soldiers killed in the crash while "supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom" (Page 2) were Staff Sgt. Gregory Rivera-Santiago, Sgt. Michael C. Hardegree, Sgt. Nicholas J. Patterson, Spc. Ari D. Brown-Weeks, and Spc. Steven R. Elrod. They were all under 30.

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hot document
entries
12
from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, at 1:22 PM ET
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Bonnie Goldstein is a former special investigator to the U.S. Senate and investigative producer for ABC News.
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