{"id":9487,"date":"2007-01-01T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2007-01-01T14:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9487.html"},"modified":"2007-01-01T09:00:12","modified_gmt":"2007-01-01T14:00:12","slug":"3000-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/3000-2\/","title":{"rendered":"3,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to Saddam Hussein’s execution, the word of the day, Joshua Holland notes<\/a>, was “milestone.” As in Bush’s statement<\/a> marking Saddam’s death: “Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself.” By Holland’s count, it was the sixteenth “turning point” or “milestone” (along with one chance to “turn the tide” and a “watershed event”) in the last three and a half years.<\/p>\n

But so long as “milestones” are open for discussion, a far more tragic one was reached yesterday<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The number of U.S. service members killed in Iraq since the war began in 2003 reached 3,000 on Sunday, a symbolic milestone at a time when the Bush administration is rethinking its strategy for the increasingly violent conflict.<\/p>\n

As the year drew to a close, the U.S. military announced that a soldier was killed Saturday by a roadside bomb while on patrol in a southeastern neighborhood of Baghdad. Two soldiers were injured in the attack. Their names were not released.<\/p>\n

The Defense Department also announced that Spec. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Tex., was killed by small-arms fire Thursday in Baghdad.<\/p>\n

According to the Associated Press and the independent Web site iCasualties.org, both of which keep counts of war fatalities, the deaths raised the American toll to at least 3,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are a couple of ways to look at this painful milestone. One is by examining the numbers, and E&P compiled an interesting analysis<\/a>. Another is to note that the results don’t include the number of Americans wounded during the war (more than 20,000<\/a>), nor the number of Iraqis killed (anywhere from 100,000 to 600,000).<\/p>\n

And then, of course, there’s the politics of it all.
\n
\nIn June, after U.S. fatalities in Iraq reached 2,500, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked if the president had “any response or reaction.” Snow responded<\/a>, “It’s a number, and every time there’s one of these 500 benchmarks, people want something.”<\/p>\n

In this case, I think Snow was right; people do “want something.” We want a president who understands reality. We want an administration with an effective policy. We want U.S. troops to get out of the middle of a civil war.<\/p>\n

In short, we want to avoid number 3,001.<\/p>\n

Here’s to a far less tragic 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to Saddam Hussein’s execution, the word of the day, Joshua Holland notes, was “milestone.” As in Bush’s statement marking Saddam’s death: “Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}