Is Ciara Durkin the new Pat Tillman?

By Libby Spencer

Via Crooks and Liars, the latest in inexplicable deaths in Afghanistan. It becomes harder to write these off as more and more outspoken active duty dissenters seem to be dying of mysterious causes.

Ciara Durkin was home on leave last month and expressed a concern to her family in Quincy: If something happens to me in Afghanistan, don’t let it go without an investigation.

Durkin, 30, a specialist with a Massachusetts National Guard finance battalion, was found dead last week near a church at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. She had been shot once in the head, the Army says.

Fiona Canavan, Durkin’s older sister, said today that when her sister was home three weeks ago, she told family members that she had come across some things that concerned her and had raised objections to others at the base.

‘‘She was in the finance unit and she said, ‘I discovered some things I don’t like and I made some enemies because of it.’ Then she said, in her light-hearted way, ‘If anything happens to me, you guys make sure it gets investigated,”’ Canavan said. ‘‘But at the time we thought it was said more as a joke.”[..]

Unfortunately it turned out to be heartbreakingly prescient. I hope the family pursues her last request and for once our all too complacent media gives it some much needed attention now, instead of waiting for years later to weigh in with single news cycle's worth of tut tuts.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)