I'll be honest, when I first read that Steven Vincent had been killed I didn't know who he was. It was only when I clicked through to some of the articles he had written and his blog that I recognized him. I had read his article in Sunday's NY Times.
20 Marines have been killed in the past two days, so the death of a journalist is hardly surprising. However, I don't think it's a coincidence that his death followed so closely after Sunday's column, in which he said that the British weren't doing enough to prevent the place being taken over by hard-line Shi'ite organizations.
I thought this post from Vincent's blog was excellent. Here's his last column for NRO on the power problems in southern Iraq.
