Happy 4,000!

Yay! 4,000 fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts are dead. The Associated Press released the news that the U.S. death toll has passed 4,000 Of course, both the president and vice-president feel bad for the losses. Or so Cheney says…

“You regret every casualty, every loss,” Vice President Dick Cheney said. “The president is the one that has to make that decision to send young men and women into harm’s way. It never gets any easier.”

It’s amazing that despite all of the American deaths in Iraq, Bush believes that the U.S. must still achieve “success”. “Blood for oil”, is what many protesters chant on the street. I am not sure if they know how right they are. Apparently, Israel wasn’t enough as a link for the United States to the Middle East. I wonder what “success” Bush is talking about. The US is spending an average of $10 billion a month on war efforts. If this is about oil, then lets just hope that it was worth it.

How bad is the cost? Financially, we’re about $1 trillion in the hole. Militarily, we’ve lost over 4,000 men and women. Regretfully, our “war on terror” has claimed the lives of almost 90,000 Iraqi men, women, and children. According the article…

“One widely respected tally by Iraq Body Count, which collects figures based mostly on media reports, estimates that 82,349 to 89,867 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives in the conflict.”

Almost 90,000 lives! So why isn’t this the headline? Simple, they’re just Iraqi civilians, not soldiers…right? If you’re not fighting for our freedom, then you won’t get a couple minutes of silence from us. People, this war is taking place in their backyards and playgrounds. Because of this, the battles aren’t taking place here on our streets and in our malls, disrupting our brunches and lattes.

By KIM GAMEL
Associated Press writer Bushra Juhi contributed to this report, as did the AP News Research Center in New York.