As mentioned yesterday on the Corner, an American army officer who blogged from Iraq for The Rocky Mountain News in Colorado has been killed in an attack in the north of the country.

The U.S. army said Major Andrew Olmsted died with another American soldier when insurgents attacked with small arms near Sadiyah, 100 miles north-east of Baghdad.

But before he left for Iraq in July, he penned a final entry about his death in the event that he did not make it back, and this has now been published posthumously.

“I’m dead,” he wrote in July 2007 as he arrived in Iraq for an 18-month tour of duty. “But if you’re reading this, you’re not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact.”

“[Being dead] sucks, at least for me and my family and friends,” he wrote. “But all the tears in the world aren’t going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss.”

In his final post, Olmsted, 37, warned against making his death an argument for or against the war.

“My life isn’t a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side,” Olmstead wrote. “I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I’m not around to expound on them I’d prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn’t support.”

He added that one of the things he would miss the most would be

“not being able to blog any longer… The ability to put my thoughts on (virtual) paper and put them where people can read and respond to them has been marvelous, even if most people who have read my writings haven’t agreed with them.
“If there is any hope for the long term success of democracy, it will be if people agree to listen to and try to understand their political opponents rather than simply seeking to crush them.”

The editor of The Rocky Mountain News, John Temple, said news of Olmstead’s death was “devastating”:

“The major was a brave man who obviously thrived on sharing his experiences and thoughts on his blog. He provided a perspective on Iraq that would have been impossible for a journalist.”