Truespeak

As you no doubt have heard, the US death toll in Iraq has now reached 3,000. In a world where we are inundated by numbers everyday from poll numbers to the stock market to sports scores and test scores, it may be tempting to view this as just another statistic. But to the families of those 3,000 soldiers, it's much more than just another statistic. So in an attempt to put this major debacle into some perspective, I thought it might be worth looking at some of these numbers a little more closely.

I'd like to look at three numbers in particular.

• 3,000
• 350,000,000,000
• 1,383

3,000 is obviously the number of US casualties in Iraq, but let's put that in perspective. 3,000 is:

• More than the number of casualties from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
• More than the combined rosters of Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL, the WNBA, and the MLS combined
• More than the population of Niobrara County in Dick Cheney's home state of Wyoming
• The population of Sherman County in George W. Bush's home state of Texas
• More than the number of troops deployed to Iraq by 31 different members of the "Coalition of the Willing"

350,000,000,000 is the current cost of the war. Put into perspective, that number is:

• Greater than the GDP of the Republic of China and 160 other nations around the world
• Greater than the salary of more than 6,000,000 public school teachers
• More than the cost for over 47,000,000 children to attend a year of Head Start
• More than the cost to insure 212,000,000 children for one year
• More than the cost of 17,000,000 four-year scholarships at public universities
• More than the cost of 3,000,000 homes

1,383 is the number of days that we have been in Iraq as of January 1, 2007. For a family of four, this equals:

• 16 birthday parties
• Four anniversaries
• Four Christmas Days
• Four New Year's Eve celebrations

And what do we have to show for all of this?







Just one debacle after another and a tarnished image the world over.

So when Bush addresses the nation later this month to announce his plans for "A New Way Forward," remember what we've accomplished so far. And know that a "surge" in troops is nothing more than more troops doing the same thing they've been doing for the last 1,383 days.