Reaching the 4,000 Milestone [View All]

[minnesota_liberal]

Each death in this stupid war is tragic, Iraqi, American and other "coalition" participants alike. And I regret that number-crunching such as this and (especially) speculating on the impact of certain milestones trivializes those deaths.

That said, milestones matter. And this one could be significant.

At the rate of 2.67 American troop deaths per day (the August pace as of today), we will reach 4,000 on December 8, in the midst of Hanukkah and a week into the Christmas advent calendar.

The impact of reaching that figure during this sensitive time of year could be significant. It's possible that protesters could grow in number and be sufficiently visible/vocal that opposition to the war/occupation would finally reach a critical point.

If the Repubs sense a threat to their policies or political influence (the only things that really matter), you can bet that they'll do whatever it takes to avoid this scenario. Postponing this milestone until after Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa would require a reduction in the troop deaths to a rate lower than it's been for over a year.

Will Bush put the "Surge" on hold and order his troops to hunker down for entirely political reasons?

If we hit 4,000 during the holidays, will citizens be too busy scrounging around for deals at Walmart to notice?

What do you think?