Seven US troops had written an editorial in the New York Times questioning our occupation in Iraq. From where they were standing, they did not see much progress on the ground . While they were writing the piece, one of them, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head. It looks like he will recover.

Unfortunately, two of his partners were not so lucky. Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance Gray died on Monday. The cargo truck they were riding in overturned and they were among the seven US troops killed in the incident.

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These are real people. When one of the players on the Buffalo Bills looked like he might be paralyzed earlier in the week, the whole country paid attention. But our soldiers are sustaining these type of injuries and worse all the time in Iraq. Unfortunately, right now they have become statistics to our politicians. I would say they are statistics to the American people as well, but poll after poll shows the American people get it. They are tired of having their brothers and sisters die for a pointless mission in Iraq.

Now if we could just get the people in DC to understand what we already understand. I hope this at least breaks through to them a little, so they can take real action in Iraq instead of capitulating to the unreasonable, immovable George Bush again.

Sgt. Mora and Sgt. Gray stand out because they were more personal to us. We read their words, we felt their frustration, we communicated with them. We got a sense of them as real human beings. They are not statistics to us. But the reality is there are thousands more like them who are all real people dying in this senseless war.

Look at what they wrote just last month before they died in Iraq (you can read the whole editorial here):

“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.”