(Occasional sobering thoughts.) It's been exactly a month since we counted casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seemed appropriate given the apparent lack of movement toward political or diplomatic resolution in either case. Since then, there's been an announcement that Britain will cut its Iraq forces by half; that the U.S. Marines want out of Iraq in order to concentrate their efforts on Afghanistan; and that in Iraq, a dire humanitarian crisis continues.With those reports in mind, here's the casualty news: according to Iraq Body Count, between 75,598 and 82,369 Iraqi women, children, and men had died in the conflict -- an increase of 1,992 to 2,145 deaths in the last 4 weeks. By the U.S. Defense Department's figures, meanwhile, 3,837 American servicemembers have been killed through yesterday. Total coalition fatalities: 4,140 persons. (That's 40 servicemember deaths in 4 weeks, all but 3 of them Americans.) The Department stated that 28,171 servicemembers have been wounded, and
that 8,475 of them required medical air transport. Military casualties in the conflict in Afghanistan stand at 450 Americans and 259 other coalition servicemembers, an increase of 2 and 5, respectively, in the last 4 weeks.
