From AP [1], Sept. 24:
WASHINGTON - Now the death toll is 9/11 times two.
U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next.
The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,974th to die in conflict.
The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
An Associated Press count of the U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 2,696 on Friday. Combined with 278 U.S. deaths in and around Afghanistan, the 9/11 toll was reached, then topped, that same day. Yesterday, another U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in northern Baghdad and two more were killed when a bomb exploded near their patrol 150 miles north of the city, the U.S. command reported.
Not for the first time, war that was started to answer death has resulted in at least as much death for the country that was first attacked.
This report fails to note that Afghan casualties of Bush's Global War on Terrorism—overwhelmingly civilian, not combatant—surpassed the 9-11 vicitms in December 2001 (see WW4 REPORT #12 [2]). Iraq Body Count [3] puts the Iraqi civilian casualties at 48,215.
See our last posts on Afghanistan [4] and Iraq and the GWOT [5].
