After a brief hiatus last week, I've come back to this blog just as the news coverage of the Iraq war's fifth anniversary has winded down. Now we're back to the daily routine of chronicling what soldier's face on and off the battle front. In some ways these war anniversaries are an excellent opportunity to pause and remember where we've been, and where we're going. In other ways it is difficult to now find ourselves with a popular interest that's once again subsided. Nevertheless, it's crucial to keep moving on.

It is almost fitting then that today we focus on recent news that the remains of a soldier who went missing in 2004 have finally been found. U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Matt Maupin went missing on April 9, 2004 during an ambush outside of Baghdad. A few months later a video surfaced depicting the shooting to death of a man dressed in Army fatigues--a man said to be Maupin. But because of the video quality, investigators were unable to positively identify that the victim was indeed Maupin.

The Associated Press reported on the reaction of Maupin's parents: