Spring soldier's death raises Iraq toll to 3,000

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The death of a Texas soldier, announced today by the Pentagon, raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000 since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.

The grim milestone was crossed on the final day of 2006 and at the end of the deadliest month for the American military in Iraq in the past 12 months. At least 111 U.S. service members were reported to have died in December.

And

Three thousand deaths are tiny compared with casualties in other protracted wars America has fought in the last century. There were 58,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, 36,000 in the Korean conflict, 405,000 in World War II and 116,000 in World War I, according to Defense Department figures.

Even so, the steadily mounting toll underscores the relentless violence that the massive U.S. investment in lives and money — surpassing $350 billion — has yet to tame, and may in fact still be getting worse.

A Pentagon report on Iraq said in December that the conflict now is more a struggle between Sunni and Shiite armed groups "fighting for religious, political and economic influence," with the insurgency and foreign terrorist campaigns "a backdrop."

And

Asked about the 3,000 figure, deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said today that the president "will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain."

Click here for the rest.

Spring isn't too far from Kingwood, where I grew up. When I was in high school, I went to speech tournaments and one act play contests in Spring. I had lots of friends from Spring when I was in college. I even did a couple of shows for a community theater group in Spring in the mid 90s. Like the death of the marine from Kingwood a week or two ago, this guy's death, moreso than the 2,998 other deaths of US service personnel in Iraq, makes me sad. He could have been me if this had been going on twenty years ago, or any of my high school or college pals. His parents and family could have been mine.

As I and others have observed before, the relatively low number of deaths has much more to do with improved field medicine and evacuation technology and procedures--lots of guys who were simply wounded in Iraq would have been dead in past wars. But that doesn't help the people we have lost. Further, for a better idea of how bad things are over there, consider the more than ten thousand wounded, many of whom are disabled or maimed for life. Consider the thousands, many of whom are still on duty, who are now suffering from the very real ravages of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is often incurable, and greatly lowers the quality of life for people suffering it--ever met any crazy Vietnam vets living in the streets?

This is all a travesty. If only these guys really were fighting to protect our freedom, instead of being pawns in an imperialist grand game--Bush really is twisting the knife when he speaks of their "sacrifice;" it was preordained that their deaths would be "in vain." And it's not even our war anymore. As the article observes, it's all about civil war now, with our troops in the crossfire, with the insurgency itself being downgraded to simply "a backdrop"--with that reality in mind, how on earth can anybody even imagine that this somehow has something to do with fighting terrorists?

The reality is that our occupation of Iraq does nothing but create terrorists by pissing off countless Muslims worldwide.

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