Remembering Omar Mora & Yance Gray

In a terrific instance of comity across the political spectrum, five blogs have joined together to set up up a memorial fund in the names of Sergeants Omar Mora and Yance T. Gray.

The men were among the seven GIs in Iraq who wrote a controversial New York Times op-ed piece questioning the war. They died on September 10 when a cargo truck overturned in western Baghdad just as General David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress of the surge.

A third author, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, was shot in the head while the article was being written and is being treated for severe brain trauma at a military hospital in the U.S.

The op-ed was titled The War As We Saw It and expressed skepticism about U.S. gains in Iraq because, the men wrote, Americans long ago wore out their welcome and any possibility that they can win through counterinsurgency warfare is far-fetched.

Mora, a resident of Texas City, Texas, was a native of Ecuador and had just become a U.S. citizen. Gray lived in Ismay, Montana.

Kyle Moore explains the memorial fund and motivation for it in a post at Comments From Left Field. The other participating blogs are The Newshoggers, a Kiko's House fave, and The Agonist, Bastard Logic and Conservative Thinking.