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A sad benchmark We have now been at war longer in Iraq than it took us to win World War II over 60 years ago. We began the sixth year of war there last week. Sunday night, a roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers. One of them earned the dubious distinction of being the 4,000th serviceman killed in the Iraqi war. Certainly we have not lost anywhere near the soldiers who died in World War II. But we have not accomplished much for such a heavy death toll either. If we were getting anywhere in Iraq, it might not be such a sad case, but the country is no closer to democracy than it was when Saddam Hussein was in power. The thousands of years of hatred between the various religious and political fractions in Iraq are no closer to being settled. While we are most concerned with U.S. losses, it should be noted that 4,000 is a drop in the bucket in the deaths there. Estimates range from a low of 150,000 total deaths, military and civilian, since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to over one million. No one knows for sure. The monetary cost is just as staggering. The U.S. has poured over $500 billion into the futile war. The amount continues to increase at about $12 billion per month. Conservative estimates say we will have spent some $2.5 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2017. Others say the cost will be $4 trillion or more. President Bush has usually ignored death milestones in the war but offered a hollow defense for this week, saying those who died did so for freedom and against terrorism. We don't see much freedom or democracy being achieved in Iraq and the fighting only seems to feed terrorism and a world-wide hatred of the U.S.
What is even worse is that there may not be an easy way out now that we have messed up things so badly in Iraq and the region.
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