Why 3K: How many more?

What follows is an amended, updated version of a story I originally wrote on October 25, 2005, when word of the 2,000th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq broke.

Today brings us very sad news. The U.S. death toll in Iraq has hit 3,000, bringing a sad end to the deadliest month of the year for the American military, a month in which reports indicate 111 servicemembers were killed. While the cost of our invasion of Iraq is far greater than numbers quoted in a news report, we must take the time to reflect on what has happened, what has got us to this point and what to do from here.

More than three years ago, on May 1, 2003, President Bush stood, triumphant, on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and proclaimed, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Behind him flew a banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

As of that speech, 139 Americans had died in Iraq. Since, as Bush said, major combat operations have ended and the United States and our allies have prevailed, 2,861 more Americans have paid the ultimate price. Three thousand Americans. Thousands more maimed, seriously wounded or left with lifelong mental scars, to say nothing of the toll the war has taken on the Iraqis themselves (one recent estimate reported 655,000 more Iraqis have died than would have had we not invaded). And for what?

Three thousand have died and the mission still hasn't been accomplished. Three thousand have died and freedom still hasn't marched. Three thousand have died and the course we're staying still hasn't been defined. Three thousand have died and the president still hasn't crafted the excuse that explains away a single flag-draped coffin. And all we truly have to show for it is the lifeless body of Saddam Hussein. Tell me, do any of you really think Hussein's execution matters? Will it make things in Iraq better? Was it worth the price paid, both by the United States and Iraq?

As we reach yet another tragically important milestone, questions remain: What does "victory" look like in Iraq? Does it look like 3,000 dead Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, a prolonged insurgency, no end in sight and civil war upon us? Was this the desired outcome when we so brazenly shifted our focus from Afghanistan to Iraq? How many more Americans must die before this president honestly answers these and so many more questions? How many more times will we allow the chattering class to tell us that the next six months are the most important? How many more opportunities will we afford administration apologists to lie us into confusing an "escalation" for a "surge"?

Many knew invading Iraq was a mistake. The administration and its surrogates decisively attacked those with the courage to speak out, to put cracks in the façade that threatened to expose a pattern of disastrous lies. To silence Joseph Wilson, the administration went so far as to expose his wife, a covert CIA operative working on - of all things - weapons of mass destruction.

When it wasn't putting politics above national security, the administration sought to silence all dissent. Anti-war protesters were labeled un-American. For wanting peace, for wanting answers, for wanting the truth, many patriotic, law-abiding Americans were branded as freedom-hating terrorists only slightly higher on the scale than the actual terrorists themselves. In fact, the very same hysteria responsible for the advent of the Iraq war allowed the administration to quietly gut the U.S. Constitution, redefining whom it considers America's enemies to possibly include those taking part in people-powered online activism. In other words, you and I.

Meanwhile, as the death toll rose, two things were occurring. First, private contractors were doing the work typically reserved for our armed forces - and making a fortune doing so. Second, downward pressure led to widespread human rights violations, both at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay. When Americans wanted answers, they were criticized. When they wanted evidence, they were denied. Everywhere you looked, truly incompetent individuals scolded those with the nerve to ask one very important question: Why?

As the administration kept soldiers in Iraq far longer than promised, they not only failed to adequately protect them with proper armor when they were there, but they also neglected them once they returned home, vastly undercutting their health benefits. And, once American soldiers died, the administration also callously ignored grieving mothers like Cindy Sheehan, going so far as to use the right-wing noise machine to badmouth a woman who paid the ultimate sacrifice, whose only crime was wanting to know why her son was killed. And whenever the Sheehans of the world spoke out, the Ann Coulters of the world mocked them, lamenting the fact that their personal tragedies prevented critics from personally attacking them.

At every turn, those asking "Why?" were called into question. Following the news of the 2,000th U.S. death in Iraq, Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the multinational force's combined press center, said in an e-mail to reporters, "I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq. The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives." Fox's Rupert Murdoch said, "The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute." What's more, the president famously characterized the disastrous state of affairs in Iraq as "just a comma" in the final history of the nation.

Has any of this registered with the war president, the commander-in-chief who hasn't yet attended his first military funeral and who appears to be on the verge of a troop escalation despite November's elections, a stunning rebuke of his stay-the-course philosophy? The answer to that question, sadly, is "No." A new year is here, yet nothing has changed. A new direction has been promised, yet it will no doubt lead to the same tragic outcomes. The right wing, as they always have, has shifted the blame for their disastrous policies, blaming both the Iraqis themselves and what they consider a weak American will. But the longer they ignore reality, the more excuses they hide behind, the more Americans will pay the ultimate price. And try as they might to ignore the bottom line, they can't look past today's news. We can't let them.