IRAQ 25K. At icasualties.org, the site which tracks American and coalitional deaths and woundings, there is a fantastic slideshow essay put together by Glenn Kutler for Newsweek to mark the 25,000th American casualty -- about 22,000 wounded, and nearly 3,000 dead -- in Iraq. (Click on the impossible-to-miss graphic in the top-right corner of the site to start the slideshow.) It is sobering to watch.
So far this month, there have been 48 American fatalities through 14 days which, should that pace continue, will result in 106 total fatalities by month's end. There have never been back-to-back triple-digit fatality months during the war, and this month will be no exception, since November brought only 69 fatalities. But if this month continues at its present pace, it will mark the second time there has been two triple-digit fatality months within a three-month span. The other such window? That would be November 2004 when, after six months of waiting for Bush's re-election to begin the assault on Fallujah, we lost 137 Americans, followed soon thereafter by 107 fatalities in January 2005. In fact, if December 2006 does, tragically, reach 106 fatalities, the Oct-Dec 2006 will become the deadliest calendar quarter of the war, with 281 fatalities. During the fourth quarter of 2004, which included the Fallujah counter-offensive, there were just 272 American fatalities.
I'm compelled to ask: Has anyone else in the media noted the 25,000 threshold? Will they, at month's end, note this as the deadliest quarter in the war should that reality, sadly, eventuate? Given that almost nobody mentions the fact that more Americans have been killed in Iraq than were killed on September 11, 2001, I seriously doubt it. And, of course, although the Iraq Study Group report has generated a momentary upsurge in mentions of Iraqi deaths, woundings and displacements, discussions of overall estimates of Iraqi fatalities will soon return to the category of the rarely-mentioned. Happy holidays.
--Tom Schaller
