Just How Many Deaths Will It Take?

by James Glaser
October 19, 2006

Eleven American troops were killed yesterday in Iraq. Usually when somebody gets killed several get wounded, but once again we are kept in the dark about how many of our troops were wounded.

We do know that 70 troops have been killed so far this month, and it has been reported that over 400 were wounded in the first two weeks. So by now we have had over 500 casualties this month. With total deaths approaching 2,800 and total wounded over 21,000 in George Bush's war in Iraq, you have to start asking, how many deaths will it take before the American public puts a stop to this bloodshed?

By the time it was all over with 58,193 Americans were killed in Vietnam. It seems like that number is so large compared to our losses in Iraq, but think of this, it took over six years in Vietnam before we reached the number of troops killed in Iraq in these last 3 ½ years. Those numbers can climb really fast if we are not watching what is going on.

Right now, Washington would have us believe that we are only fighting al Qaeda and some group called "insurgents,' but what happens if the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia all decide that we are the bad guys?

How many will it take? How many body bags do we have to fill before America wakes up and realizes that some very fine young men and women are dying for a war that never needed to happen? Not a war of necessity, but a war of choice.




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