Michael Kelly, 46, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war in Iraq, has been killed in a Humvee accident while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
He was quoted in the New York Times just four days ago as saying that he and other reporters enlisted in the Pentagon program because "there was a real sense after the last gulf war that witness had been lost. The people in the military care about that history a great deal, because it is their history."
Kelly's fluid prose and conservative ideas made him an exceptional voice in the mainstream media.
He was quoted in the New York Times just four days ago as saying that he and other reporters enlisted in the Pentagon program because "there was a real sense after the last gulf war that witness had been lost. The people in the military care about that history a great deal, because it is their history."
Here's what others said:
David Bradley, the chairman and owner of Atlantic Media, said "This is the first friend and the best friend I made in journalism. In that quarter of the heart, he can't be touched. He is loved by everyone at The Atlantic, by everyone at the National Journal, by everyone at the places we worked together. The Atlantic has had 145 years of good times and bad, but no moment more deeply sad than this one now. The best we can make of this hour is to surround his wife and children and parents and family with some measure of the love we have for Michael."
Peggy Noonan: The death of Michael Kelly is a sin against the order of the world. He was a young man on his way to becoming a great man. He was going to be one of the great editors of his time, and at the age of 46 he was already one of its great journalists. And one's first thought about him, after saying the obvious--that he wrote like a dream, that he was a great reporter with great eyes, that he was a keen judge of what is news and what should be news--is this. He was an independent man. He had an indignant independence that was beauty to behold. He knew what he thought and why, and he announced it in his columns and essays with wit and anger.
Ken Ringle offers a good piece too.
He posted his last column yesterday. It was about crossing the Euphrates River. It reminds me of Stonewall Jackson's last words. "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."
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