I am looking at icasualties.org at 6 a.m. on March 3, 2005, a Wednesday. They have the 'official' count of U.S. military deaths at 1,499, which I presume to mean that most likely it will reach 1,500 today sometime, if it has not already:
http://icasualties.org/oifHere is LynnTheDem's listing of the names of the soldiers:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3199017From The Chicago Tribune, Dec. 2002 (Michael Kilian):
http://iraq-info.1accesshost.com/trib7.html"If you get into the mid-hundreds running up toward a thousand, you will see public sentiment questioning the legitimacy of what we're doing," said Jay Farrar, a former Marine Corps officer and Defense Department official. "The public will want to know more about what it is we're doing on a more regular basis, and why we're doing it this way, and what is leading to this number of deaths."
The Bush administration is not publicly addressing the question of casualties, although its battle plans appear designed to avoid a high U.S. death toll. The White House may fear such talk could weaken public support for the war.
Yet success or failure may turn on the casualty factor more than any other one.
As the Vietnam and Korean Wars have shown, too many U.S. losses--combined with too little progress over too long a time--can erode the political support a president needs to wage war.
A slaughter of Iraqi civilians also could diminish support at home while alienating U.S. allies in Europe and the Persian Gulf, provoke further bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians and inflame anti-American feelings among fundamentalist Muslims.Iraq Body Count puts their 'official' civilian death count at 18,395 maximum:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/And, finally, a reminder of another prediction:
Journalist Thomas Powers, who wrote an article in the New York Times "The Man Who Would Be President of Iraq." Pulitzer Prize winner and expert on the CIA and intelligence, he has written "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al Qaeda." The interview with Terry Gross was on March 17, 2003, before the ground war had started. The ground war started on March 19.
GROSS: If we create a new government, and if that government is, as you describe it, more of a client government, do you think that government is going to be under attack either by other Iraqis or by terrorists from other countries?
POWERS: It's hard to say when the trouble will begin.
You know, the thing that worries me about this whole episode is the magnitude of the grand scheme that the Bush Administration has dreamed up for transforming the political landscape of the Middle East. You know, big ideas are the ones that give you the most trouble and trying to make the world perfect just leads to disaster, in my opinion, and I think that has sort of been the record of human history, and whenever we've engaged in a really big endeavor, trouble comes.
Now exactly when that is going to happen, I don't know. There's gonna be some kind of a government there. We're gonna be there. Eventually, you know, after the fighting stops, the dust settles and everything is quiet for a while. And for a time it looks like: 'Gee, this wasn't so hard. You know, this is gonna be a big success.'
But you've changed the fundamental relationships of people there and gradually they realize what the limits of their action are, and they realize, well, we can't have any, you know, any military forces with tanks attacking the Americans, but it isn't that hard to kind of sneak up on 'em in the streets.
And I think sort of an endless amount of trouble will slowly begin to bubble forth, so I figure we're gonna have a month of war, and then we're gonna have a month of indecision, and then we're gonna have a couple of months where everything looks pretty good. And then after that, things are gonna start going downhill, and it's gonna be trouble, and it's gonna be money and it'll take a generation to resolve it.$156,798,928,262 as of 6:30 a.m. ($82 Billion Not Included):
http://www.costofwar.com 
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