2007 Now the Deadliest Year Ever for U.S. Troops in Iraq

The toll for American troops is now at 854 dead with a little less than two months to go in the year.

The Guardian reports 2007 is the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Iraq . The prior worst year in Iraq for troops was 2004 when 849 soldiers were killed in the battles for Fallujah. Thank you Blackwater.

I do not expect this grave record to get significant attention in America’s media because of how the deaths are being spun and ignored.

According to The Guardian:

The Pentagon attributes the high toll to an initial increase in combat operations, and higher visibility of US troops on the streets earlier this year as part of President George Bush’s “surge” strategy, which saw an extra 30,000 troops sent to Iraq.

But after that intial rise in casualties, the numbers killed have been on a downward trend since May; last month’s figure was the lowest since early last year.

The American death toll is dropping. That is, until the next time it rises again, which it will.

If recent polls this year are to be believed, most Americans want U.S. troops out Iraq and think the war was a bad idea. But, as the Financial Times reported in October, Iraq is fading as a hot political issue. “A well-placed bomb in Baghdad’s Green Zone could change everything but, for the time being, the war in Iraq has ceased to be the US’s hot political issue.”

Why is it fading? Perhaps Americans have learned to live with ongoing occupation? For the most part, the pain of war is borne by a very small few.

But as Iraq fades from the headlines, America is still locked in a war we cannot afford anymore. The country loses a little more than 2 soldiers a day. Each day, Americans are borrowing and spending to keep the occupation going. In the more than four years of Iraq war and occupation, 3,856 soldiers haved died so far and 28,451 wounded. $466,397,000,000 already borrowed and spent and more being borrowed and spent every day.