Iraq through a soldier’s death

The cover of the latest U.S. News and World Report features a story chronicling the life and death of Army Staff Sgt. Darrell Ray Griffin, Jr. The writer met Griffin during an embed assignment in March, only to find out that a sniper’s bullet took Griffin’s life a few days later in Sadr City.

Using interviews, photographs and his personal diary entries, the story rebuilds Griffin’s own internal battle about the war and his own sense of purpose. It’s a striking contrast to the political rhetoric coming from both sides of the spectrum, with Republicans and Democrats alike claiming to know how the troops feel. The real story is much more complex. 

In one diary entry, Griffin reveals his conflicted feelings about the war:

My heart finally broke for the Iraqi people. I wanted to just sit down and cry while saying I’m so, so sorry for what we had done. I had the acute sense that we had failed these people. It was at this time, and after an entire year of being deployed and well into the next deployment that I realized something. We burst into homes, frighten the hell out of families, and destroy their homes looking for an elusive enemy. We do this out of fear of the unseen and attempt to compensate for our inability to capture insurgents by swatting mosquitoes with a sledge-hammer in glass houses.

More diary entries and pictures are linked from the main story.