Remember

August 21, 2007, an Op-Ed in the New York Times.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. 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...

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

The words of seven enlisted men in Iraq. Juddhika Jayamaha, an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck a sergeant. Omar Mora a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier a sergeant. Yance T. Gray a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy a staff sergeant.

Their words were largely ignored by the media.

And now:

Staff Sergeant Yance Gray of Ismay was killed when the cargo truck he was riding in overturned in Baghdad...

A funeral with military honors is planned at Arlington National Cemetery. And a public memorial service is planned later in Ismay.

Gray was a graduate of Plevna High School, and the son of Richard and Karen Gray of Ismay. He is also survived by his wife and infant daughter, who live in North Carolina.

...and it goes ever on...

It is old and worn, but for months a yellow ribbon served as a sign of hope, that one day Sgt. Omar Mora would be home.

"He was coming home in November. He was coming home in November,” his mother Olga Capetillo said.

Mora, 28, died Monday. He was one of seven American troops killed near Baghdad in vehicle rollover accident.

It was his second tour of duty...

His sister said his wife and 5-year-old daughter were his strength and motivation.

Family photo

Sgt. Omar Mora was killed in an vehicle accident outside of Baghdad on Monday.

"I gonna tell Jordan her father was a really great man. He was a really great man

Story found here.

How tragically profound that these men died on the sixth anniversary of the great monstrous event that this Administration has squandered by malevolently exploiting our anger over and over and over again -- and fucked up in every way possible.

The War Against Terror has become the War Against Rationality, where critics, not Al Qaeda are the enemy...or perhaps, in the best light just made equivalent to each other. For the only recognized "Patriot" is the unquestioning one, the one who acts as if they are in Stalin's Russia, not America. I keep hearing its a war of "Ideals" but apparently the Ideal America is one that willingly swallows propaganda as if we were props in an Orwell novel.

And in THIS America for these two men...

There will be no perpetual think tank jobs and cable news appearances for these two men (or their 3772 [and counting] fellow victims) like there will be for Michael O'Hanlon and various Kagans.

There will be no Medals of Freedom for their service, like for Paul Bremer or Norman Podhoretz.

There will be no publications they can get their kids jobs at, where they can avoid military service to "fight the war of ideas" like Jonah Goldberg or John Podhoretz.

There will be no dreaming of $75,000 speaking honorariums and getting bored at their donor funded Wanker Institutes like George Bush.

No pardons like for Scooter Libby.

No Fourth Stars like for various parading "Commanders on the Ground".

No "Freedom" concerts that can draw the likes of Joe Lieberman, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter (and one wonders what she called these two in the last three weeks) so that money can be raised for empty memorials and discount grief counselors. "Sorry we helped get your dad killed, but hey here's a $250 toward that Junior College. Now, onward to Iran!"

No, only secreted flag-covered coffins, short dignified funerals, a widow, a fatherless child -- and the empty generalized thanks of a nation going through the motions...all for the sake of keeping George Bush and his enablers from admitting they lost the war they started needlessly.