Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Now We Know How Many

Apparently, this is the number of deaths required to cause the media to stand up and take notice:
The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today all lead with the mushrooming violence in Iraq, where 11 U.S. troops died Tuesday and a twelfth died Wednesday.

...

The latest deaths put October on track to be the third-deadliest month of the war. Digging into the details of the Iraq casualty reports reveals that the numbers are actually worse than they first appear. The two deadliest months of the war for U.S. forces were April 2004 (with 135 deaths) and November 2004 (with 137 deaths). Significantly, those months were marked by full-scale offensives in Falluja and Najaf. This month, the NYT notes, the "military has not conducted any major operations," and yet at the current rate, around 120 Americans will have died by November 1. In other words, day-to-day operations in Iraq are now nearly as deadly as open warfare was two years ago—and perhaps for those on the ground, there is little distinction.
I regularly watch the Newshour with Jim Lehrer. Every night they end the broadcast with pictures of the dead soldiers. Last night there were twenty four, one of which was a 57 year old staff sgt.
Written at 10:08 AM by Greyhair.
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