3,000 Deaths in Iraq, Countless Tears at Home

[gristy]

This article is from today's Sarasota Herald Tribune. An IED blew up this guy's tank and killed him. His fucking 67 ton tank. If this is typical, scrap steel for their hummers and body armor for themselves looks to be too little too late at this point. :(


3,000 Deaths in Iraq, Countless Tears at Home
LIZETTE ALVAREZ AND ANDREW LEHREN

Jordan W. Hess was the unlikeliest of soldiers.

He could bench-press 300 pounds and then go home and write poetry. He learned the art of glass blowing because it seemed interesting and built a computer with only a magazine as his guide. Most recently, he fell in love with a woman from Brazil and took up digital photography, letting both sweep his heart away.
<snip>
The landmark reflects how much more dangerous and muddled a soldier’s job in Iraq has become in the face of a growing and increasingly sophisticated insurgency. Violence in the country is at an all-time high, according to a Pentagon report released last month. December was the third deadliest month for American troops since the start of the war, with insurgents claiming 111 soldiers’ lives. October and November also witnessed a high number of casualties, 106 and 68 respectively, as American forces stepped up combat operations to try to stabilize Baghdad.

“It escalated while I was there,” said Capt. Scott Stanford, a National Guard officer who was a commander of a headquarters company in Ramadi for a year, arriving in June 2005. “When we left this June, it was completely unhinged. There was a huge increase in the suicide car bombs we had. The I.E.D.’s were bigger and more complex.”

“And it was very tense before we left in terms of snipers,” said Captain Stanford, a member of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “I don’t know if there were more of them, or if they were getting better.”

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070101/ZNYT02/701010656/1006/SPORTS

[peacetalksforall]

1. I don't know anyone who lost their child , spouse, parent, relative..

All day I've been thinking of different greetings I would give this New Year's Day in place of Happy New Year - if I did know one who lost a child, spouse, parent, relative.

Our kids, our kids and the Iraqi kids.