4,474 Americans Dead in Iraq

The last man to die for a mistake, this time around, is Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman. He was hit by an IED on November 14 and later died of his injuries. We mourn his loss.

While our president plays politics, making a speech this week using (again) troops as a background stage prop as did Bush before him, Hickman died. The president, who stated he opposed the war as a candidate eager to manipulate voters, this week said the wisdom of invading Iraq will depend on the judgment of history. Voters are easy to manipulate, as contemptuous politicians know. Current candidates for the presidency outdo each other beating the war drum for Iran.

Our wars, our only legacy from the evil of 9/11, signs of a nation gone mad, have cost America over $4 trillion. They have impoverished our country, caused us to mortgage our future to foreign investors, seen us throw away funding for schools, for police, funding for ourselves, to instead enrich Iraqi and Afghan contractors, fatten Blackwater and stuff the coffers of thugs like KBR.

Yet while money is one thing to squander, we weep over the unnecessary loss of lives. For every fat drunken slob this weekend "supporting the troops" by sticking a magnet (likely made abroad) on his car (likely made abroad), I say, enjoy life in hell. If that is obscene to you, how do you describe these deaths? We have thrown away the best of ourselves.

As for fighting for our freedom, with the arguable exception of the first three months of the now 10-year Afghan war, you have to go back 70 years to find a time when we truly fought to protect America. So stop saying that.

We honor them this Christmas not by sending more of their brothers and sisters to die. Do the dead lack company?

Since the invasion of 2003 until the last soldiers left Iraq this week, 4,474 Americans died there. How many is that? I decided to show myself, typing one X for each of them.

It did not take that long -- a soldier hit in a major vessel can bleed out in only a few minutes -- one key after another. Joshua, Jacob, Rahim, Carol, Towana, Richard, a couple of Peters, another with the same name as my own military-age child. Too many took their own lives, but just an X below nonetheless because they died of this war same as those who died in it.

Pick one X and think about him or her this holiday season.

For every X is a space, 4,474 of them too, moms and dads, brothers, friends, girlfriends, dogs, empty spaces.

And remember the ending of John Kerry's Vietnam-era speech, the famous one that began by asking "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" He concluded by saying, "And so when 30 years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned..."

Kerry was wrong, as we watch the end of yet another war, wondering aloud again when America will turn.

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 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Comments

[Gestas]

01:57 PM on 12/21/2011

Send Bush and Cheney the bill for this one....They most likely made enough off the Iraq war, TO PAY FOR IT.... Lets hope and pray that the Iraq war has taught the U.S. a major lesson in War Profiteering.

[blutopie]

01:07 PM on 12/21/2011

great article - cuts right thru phony American patriotism/nationalism/exceptionalism

[Robert Frano]

12:04 PM on 12/21/2011

Re: "The last man to die for a mistake, this time around, is Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman. He was hit by an IED on November 14 and later died of his injuries. We mourn his loss..." {P.VanBuren}...

How's that 'search-for-W.M.D.'s' goin, Mr. Bush? ...Mr. Blair? Any better than O.J.Simpson's (golf-course-) hunt for the 'real-killers'?

Thus far the ONLY mourning on my part is, primarily, in remembrance of 359 co-workers, splattered on girders in a Staten Island, NY, land-fill & the 3,000 killed that same-day...with another 800-&-counting, (from 'The-Pile'), since.

If you went to this war-profiteering adventure, (on ANY 'religio-political-side'), without being ‘press-ganged’, (like an {18th.-century} date-rape-for-shipping-org's staffing_requirements), I have no_tears for you.

[Blogging Patriot]

11:58 AM on 12/21/2011

President Bush made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/?gclid=CObu_4-J1KoCFYcZQgodPwk-XQ

3/27/03 testimony before a Senate Appropriations Hearing

Rumsfeld:

I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense...[Reconstruction] funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it.

Wolfowitz:

We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.

[thebigbike]

11:37 AM on 12/21/2011

and more than One Hundred Thousand (100,000) Iraqi civilians dead. The vast majority not by our direct action but as a result of the chaos our actions introduced and exacerbated by the by criminal incompetence of the previous administration's actions and policies or lack thereof..

[Earl Hickey]

11:30 AM on 12/21/2011

50,000+ americans killed in the last Democratic Party war.

1002 americans killed in Afghanistan since Obama became president.

Hypocrisy.

[CelticMajic]

09:52 AM on 12/21/2011

We are indeed a despicable nation. We have no redeeming values. Our motivations are selfish, barbarous and cruel. Self loathing and self flagellation are indeed worthy pursuits Mr. Van Buren.

[greyhound2]

09:04 AM on 12/21/2011

Now that the war is over, isn't it time to prosecute those in authority who lied about the reasons for the initial invasion? It was more than simple incompetance.

[Footwarrior]

08:36 AM on 12/21/2011

The Vietnam war was a lesson, but not all Americans learned from it. Those that led us into Iraq didn't consider the Vietnam war a mistake.

[thinkermom]

08:14 AM on 12/21/2011

Don't Iraqi deaths count? Why not mention, by some estimates over 1 million Iraqi deaths, and how many more injured for life....women, children? I find it ironic that for a country that has oceans on both sides and friendly neighbors to the north and south, that we can fool so many Americans into thinking we are "fighting for our freedoms".

[ghouri]

06:54 AM on 12/21/2011

Actual figure is much more higher as given by americans.
An Iraki friend told me whole convoy with 50 vehicles were destroyed but only one death?
Busch said we don,t count body bags. Truth will come out after the war is totally over but there are articles telling that death toll was above 40000 of americans and 2 million Irakis.
For me even if one person died without any reason is not acceptable and soldiers are also humans.

[Robert Frano]

12:20 PM on 12/21/2011

Re: "Truth will come out after the war is totally over but there are articles telling that death toll was above 40000 of americans and 2 million Irakis..." {ghouri}...

Where the 'pro-lifers' go, death & destruction surely follow!
Vietnam, (after-the-fact): 3 Million dead civilians; 58,000+ Dead Americans.
South-American-continent, (post Ronald 'Teflon' Reagan): 1.5-2.0 Million dead civilians; Toll-On-U.S.-Death-Squad-Members: Unknown/Unpublished/Plausably_Denied.

Bush's war has killed over 6400+ Americans, (...and climbing), by now; That's a 'two-fer', as compared with 3,800+, (including 800+ due to 'sick-building-haz-mat' issues), re 11.Sept.01.

How many more body-bags to ensure that 'prolifers’, (like recent Catholic-convert Tony Lap_Dog' Blair), can retire to world-acclaim…for stealing-so-much, while harming-so-many?!

[SingAlelluia]

12:48 AM on 12/21/2011

And how many deaths on the Iraqi side? 103,160–113,728 civilian deaths recorded and 28,736-37,120 iraqi soldiers. Yep that's the truth. Somehow American combattant deaths receive more humanism than innocents, people that did nothing yet died because of US forces.
You may be trying to prove that the US government did wrong yet you don't do it well. Maybe because you are afraid or too patriotic.
Americans should question their government about their foreign policy. Most do not even know that an occupation is going on in Palestine.
Really sad ...

[Carl Caroli]

10:30 PM on 12/20/2011

So very sad. All for blood money, oil, profiteering, mercenaries. And now they beat the drum for Iran.

[NWGuy]

10:05 PM on 12/20/2011

4,474 American service men and women dead, thousands more maimed.
What's important to remember about the invasion of and war in Iraq is: the US was never at risk or in danger from Iraq; there were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no risk of a 'mushroom cloud'; Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; Saddam was a big fish in a little pond and more of a danger to his own people than to anyone else; and, most important, the American people were shepherded down a path to invasion and war by politicians that used 9/11 to push a separate political agenda and those that argued were branded unpatriotic or unAmerican.

What we should learn from the Iraq 'war': Question Authority
Again and again and again.
Our elected officials work for us, not the other way around.

[dahlia97]

12:36 AM on 12/21/2011

F and F!
Everything you said is so TRUE!
No one wants to think their loved ones died in vain, but they did!
Let that be a lesson to us!

[verita vincera]

08:01 PM on 12/20/2011

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million people were killed... I agree with with you about Obama's manipulation but disagree about the "Manipulated Voters comment." Which really you condemn yourself by such a "manipulative statement."
Gullible Voters that are easily manipulated by the non-sense spewed from revisionist, would be those who really believe any Socialist Marxist would promote "The American Way."