OP-ED AUTHORS PERISH IN IRAQ DURING PETRAEUS TESTIMONY. As Gen. Petraeus was testifying before Congress this week about the progress of the surge, two of the seven soldiers on active duty who penned last month's New York Times op-ed questioning whether we are making any gains in Iraq died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad.
Omar Mora and Yance T. Gray, both sergeants with the 82nd Airborne, died when the cargo truck they were riding in overturned on Monday, but news of it reached Washington as Petraeus was wrapping up his testimony. The soldiers' op-ed questioned claims by military leaders and the press about headway being made in Iraq, and called the United States an "army of occupation." From the op-ed:
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. 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. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the ''battle space'' remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
--Kate Sheppard
