[
Cross-posted from The Next Hurrah.]
Unless something changes dramatically and soon, the total coalition fatalities in Iraq will top 2500 by Christmas. Figure, I suppose, something like 75 times that many dead Iraqis, mostly civilians, but also tens of thousands of Saddam's soldiers, as well as thousands of soldiers and police in the new Shi'ite-led government.
This week one of those American fatalities was Staff Sgt. Ryan Ostrom, aged 25. He was raised and lived in Liberty, Pennsylvania, and joined the National Guard when he was just 17. He served in Bosnia before going to Iraq a month ago. He was studying to be a teacher. Here is his photograph.
If fatalities continue at the same level they have in the first 12 days of this month, August may become one of the worst months for American soldiers in Iraq since the war began. Another 25-year-old, Casey Sheehan, was killed in one of those terrible months - April 2004.
As just about everyone in the country now knows, Sheehan's mother, Cindy, has become the most famous anti-Iraq Debacle protester so far, camping out near Dubyanocchio's Crawford, Texas, turf, where the only thing qualifying as "ranch" is the salad dressing. As in past American wars, this one has split families, Cindy's included. But in past wars, scarcely anyone would have dared call the mother of a dead soldier someone "bordering on treasonous," as that scabby excrescence Bill O'Reilly said August 9.
As Hunter and suzq point out on the front page and in the Diaries, when it comes to this matter, the spinners are even more insufferable than usual. But it's no shock that rightwingholes - from blogger nutcases to pundithugs with multimillion-dollar contracts - are doing everything in their considerable power to transform Cindy Sheehan into a caricature captured by the radical fringe, this generation's Jane Fonda. Unfortunately, just as too many Americans swallowed the propaganda that put Sheehan and Ostrom in harm's way, too many Americans will wallow in this dungpile, giving credence to the most despicable liars in their blinkered patriotism.