Personality Disorder has been the scapegoat discharge for some time now. This discharge robs soldiers of benefits, help, and a future life in certain occupations. The military has turned their back on soldiers and just to save a few bucks, the military doctors are ruining the future for over 24,000 soldiers. And now they are trying to do the same thing to me. THIS must stop!

Two of the seven Non-Commissioned Officers who authored that brilliant New York Times op ed of several weeks ago have died in Iraq.

From Editor & Publisher:

Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. 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.

edit

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.

As Greg Mitchell reminds us, the op ed was quoted around the world, and General Patraeus was asked about during his testimony. And rightly so.

The op ed was clear, precise, and filled with truth. It managed to explain the strategic incoherence of our occupation of Iraq.

The only impressive aspect of the entire Bush Iraq policy has been the quality of the men and women who are serving there. The lives of how many of them do our toxic leaders think we can afford to sacrifice at the alter of Bush’s megalomania?

In another P & E article we learn more about how the op ed came to be, like the fact that it was submitted “unsolicited” to the Times for publication.

Rosenthal said Deputy Editorial Page Editor David Shipley handled arrangements with the soldiers, including making sure they were comfortable with the likely negative reaction.

“They said from the get-go they did not want to be paid for this,” Shipley said, declining to reveal his payment scale, but said most freelance columnists are paid several hundred dollars. “It was a definite statement from them.”

“It was a really wonderful piece, we thought. I am proud of them. I thought it was great and what the Op Ed page is for,” Rosenthal said. “We had heard they got some grief from bosses about writing about this. But this is the 21st Century and people communicate with each other. Not every soldier in Iraq buys this Potemkin war that they are selling.”

Rosenthal added that their deaths drive home the impact the war continues to have on individuals, even with talk of later pullouts and drawn downs: “How many American lives, how many Iraqi lives are enough?”

The military had responded to the Op Ed: “It is important to note that as individuals voice their opinions on matters, that those viewpoints are representative of their personal perspective,” the Pentagon statement said at the time. “With approximately 160,000 Americans serving in uniform here in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, you’ll probably get that many different perspectives if you ask each of them.”

Below the fold, you will find the entire op ed reproduced. If you haven’t read it, do so. If you have, do so again. The solders who wrote it did so with a full measure of devotion to what this country is supposed to be about.  Read more 

Via Steve ’n’ Jen’s joint, the News Blog. They have the whole list from the first man dead in this endless war (Justin W. Pollard, 21, Army Specialist, Dec 30, 2003.)

It’s a very long list though and I decided to hold it to just those who have died so far in this very month we still are in. The list will be longer before the month is over, and some days after that as more names are confirmed.

May they all find their way to the Summerlands. May their friends and their families find peace. Goddess grant grace and healing to the wounded and maimed, of body and mind, as well.

And now to the dead, just for the month of May, year of the common era the 2007th, and of the Constitution of the United States of America the 220th:  Read more