As I conjectured here last week, the death toll of American troops stationed in Iraq has surpassed two thousand.

Both today's New York Post and Daily News went with the story as front page news. At the Post, 2000 HEROES was the banner headline over a full page photo of empty helmets mounted on rifle barrels with an out of focus flag in the background. Nicely effective, but of course they use the event to push the "stay the course" message of Fightin' G.W. & His Howling Chicken Hawks. Meanwhile the Daily News used a black background and featured a photo of Staff Sgt. George Alexander, Jr. the soldier officially acknowledged as being the two thousandth. We can only hope that neither side of the debate will use this husband & father as a 'poster boy' in arguments on our continuing presence in that country.

On the other hand, the AP came out with an article which speaks about not only the U.S. soldiers, sailors & Marines who have been killed, but also an estimated 30,000 or more Iraqi casualties. According to the Brookings Institute an average of 60-70 American troops per month have been killed since the beginning of the war, while an approximate number of 1,500 to 2,000 civilians in the country have died each month. One military spokesman the AP quotes says that even he was not allowed to look at official U.S. military figures of how many Iraqi citizens may have perished.

As John Kerry said during his ill-fated campaign last year, echoing the Vietnam era slogan, "Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake? ...."

We have brought little but more than suffering to the Iraqi people. Bring the troops back home!