This op-ed was mentioned at least twice in the Senate hearings Tuesday
by antiwar senators, one of them was Chuck Hagel.

These names have not been released yet by military...

September 12, 2007

2 Soldiers Who Wrote About Life in Iraq Are Killed

By DAVID STOUT
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_stou
t/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 - "Engaging in the banalties of life has become a
death-defying act," the seven soldiers wrote of the war they had seen
in Iraq.

They were referring to the ordeals of Iraqi citizens, trying to go
about their lives with death and suffering all around them. They did not know
it at the time, but they might almost have been referring to themselves.

Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war, in an
Op-Ed article
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?ex=1189742400
&en=10c7f4155337e9ab&ei=5070>  that appeared in The New York Times on
Aug. 19, were killed in Baghdad on Monday. They were not killed in
combat, nor on a daring mission. They died when the five-ton cargo
truck they were riding in overturned.

The victims, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were
among the authors of "The War as We Saw It," in which they expressed
doubts about reports of progress.
"As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and
feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest
we see every day," the soldiers wrote.

"My son was a soldier in his heart from the age of 5," Sergeant Gray's
mother, Karen Gray, said by telephone today from Ismay, Mont., where
Yance grew up. "He loved what he was doing."

"But he wasn't any mindless robot," said the sergeant's father, Richard
Gray. Sergeant Gray leaves a wife, Jessica, and a daughter, Ava, born
in April. He is also survived by a brother and sister.

Sergeant Mora's mother, Olga Capetillo of Texas City, Tex., told The
Daily News in Galveston that her son had grown increasingly gloomy
about Iraq. "I told him God is going to take care of him and take him home,"
she said.

A native of Ecuador, Sergeant Mora had recently become an American
citizen. "He was proud of this country, and he wanted to go over and
help," his stepfather, Robert Capetillo, told The Houston Chronicle.
Sergeant Mora leaves a wife, Christa, and a daughter, Jordan, who is 5.
Survivors also include a brother and sister.

While the seven soldiers were composing their article, one of them,
Staff Sgt. Jeremy A. Murphy, was shot in the head. He was flown to a
military hospital in the United States and is expected to survive. The
other authors were Buddhika Jayamaha, an Army specialist, and Sgts.
Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck and Edward Sandmeier.

"We need not talk about our morale," they wrote in closing. "As
committed soldiers, we will see this mission through."