After the Michael O’Hanlon/Ken Pollack op-ed appeared in the NYT a few weeks ago, the political response was overwhelming. It was read, repeatedly, on the floor of Congress; it was cited frequently by administration officials and its ideological allies; and O’Hanlon and Pollack became fixtures on the talking-head shows. The piece, and the story behind, was practically ubiquitous.

Flash forward a few weeks. A couple of days ago, the NYT also published an op-ed from seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division, who will soon be returning home frustrated and jaded. The piece, “The War as We Saw It,” was a sweeping condemnation of everything we’ve heard of late from the Kristol-McCain-Lieberman-O’Hanlon-Pollack crowd.

Surely, given the vast coverage of the O’Hanlon/Pollack piece, the powerful perspective of these heroes would be immediately picked up everywhere, right? Wrong. Greg Sargent explained, that the op-ed “has been met with near-total silence.”