Yes, extremely sad. I also heard this morning that Stephen Vincent, a free-lance American journalist, was shot to death in Basra. He had been doing a series of blogs on the corruption and Talibanization of Basra.
For the 14 Marines, God bless them and I thank them for their service to our country. I'll say a prayer for their families for strength during this sad time for them.
I link to Mr. Vincent's blog on my profile page. He was doing good work in Iraq, reporting on a lot of the work being done to help the country, and the corruption taking place by the new leaders (politicians are the same all over the world, except here they apparently kill you). He even mentioned the danger to his safety the other day because of what he was uncovering. I didn't know him of course, but I'm saddened by his death. He did take the risks though of going into the more dangerous areas, thus the name of his blog : In The Red Zone. http://spencepublishing.typepad.com/in_the_red_zone/