Journalist Who Joined Marines Dies in Afghanistan

[Coventina]

Source: Washington Post

Marine Sgt. Bill Cahir, a former Washington-based journalist and congressional staffer who joined the Marines in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was killed in Afghanistan on Thursday, his unit and friends reported.

Cahir, 40, who had been serving in Afghanistan's Helmand province with the Marines' 4th Civil Affairs Group, was killed by "enemy fire," a member of the unit said in a posting on its Facebook page. The death was confirmed Friday by friends of Cahir's. No other details were immediately available.

Helmand, in the southern part of Afghanistan, is a stronghold of the radical Islamist Taliban movement and has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting in recent months involving U.S. forces. In early July, almost 4,000 Marines and more than 600 Afghan soldiers entered areas of southern Helmand that had previously been under Taliban control. It was the largest Marine operation in Afghanistan since 2001, when U.S.-backed Afghan forces drove the Taliban from the capital, Kabul, ending five years of the group's extreme fundamentalist rule.

Cahir, who joined the Marines as a reservist in 2003 and served two tours in Iraq, ran unsuccessfully last year for a congressional seat in Pennsylvania, his home state, before going to work for a consulting firm in Northern Virginia, said a friend, Brett Lieberman. Cahir had formerly worked in Washington as a correspondent for Newhouse News Service and as a staffer for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee under Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). He lived in Alexandria.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/14/AR2009081401234.html

[Botany]

1. R.I.P. Marine Sgt. Bill Cahir

:patriot: Marine Sgt. Bill Cahir

[barbtries]

2. stop the wars

stop the wars, stop the wars :cry:

[Coventina]

3. Wow, can't believe someone "unrecommended" this to drop

it from the "Greatest" page.

This guy worked for Sen. Kennedy & ran for Congress as a Democrat.

Someone here is complete scum.

[merh]

4. Rest in Peace Sgt. Bill Cahir

:patriot:

[caseymoz]

5. Him & Pat Tilman: It seems like the people most patrioticly motivated are getting killed.

Pat Tilman gave up millions of dollars playing in the NFL to volunteer and fight after 9/11. We know how that one ended. He was about the only star athlete to do it. We know how badly that ended.

Now Cahir. But his seems a little less pure since he wanted to run for office.

[Crabby Appleton]

6. R.I.P. Sgt. Bill Cahir