One

Really, the headline says it all. "U.S. Military Deaths Top 1,900 in Iraq". Oh, I know that figure doesn't seem like much as wars go, compared to to the 58,000 lost in Vietnam, or the 54,000 lost in Korea, or the 405,000 lost in World War II. But for every family with a child in fatigues that's asking themselves "Why?" today, those kinds of comparisons mean nothing.

The only important number to them is one.

They're thinking only of the one who believed in protecting his nation
from "imminent danger". The one who trusted that she'd be greeted as a liberator. The one who had blind faith in government tales of WMD's and ties to al Qaeda.

The one who'll never come home again.

With the triple disasters of Katrina, Rita, and Bush hogging the airwaves, this terrible milestone barely registered a blip on the radar. And that's a disgrace. At the very least, the Administration and the media owe each of those grieving families a forthright explanation of just what the hell we're accomplishing in Iraq. Something beyond platitudes, and talking points, and outright lies. Something more than the cavalier attitude that this slow march toward 2,000 lifeless kids is just business as usual.

A few weeks ago, John Gibson of FOX News "sympathetically" declared,

I'd trade the 1,900 American soldiers for Saddam in a heartbeat. What's so hard about that decision?

How nice for John, to be so certain about the sacrifice of other people's children. I guess he's never had to face that one empty chair at the table. That one missing present under the tree. That one goodnight kiss that's now only a shattered memory.

And too bad for America that this same willingness to send our kids to
die, one at a time, one day after another, for some vain and fabricated "cause", is shared by the one sitting in the Oval Office. Can't anybody in Washington come up with a way to end this madness?

Somewhere out there, one family prays that the answer is "Yes."