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Disaster! The Iraq War

In Australia, the death of Private Kosco on 21 April last has occupied the media.

But reflect on this:

"The real fighting [in Iraq] has been done by the Americans. Over the weekend, as Kovco's family and his regiment were receiving his body with full military ceremony, another dozen bodies, all Iraqis, were found in Baghdad, all shot in the head.

And another American soldier died, killed by a bomb.

This young man's family will be awaiting confirmation of the news they dread. Soon they, too, will be present for the return of the body with full ceremony, a ritual played out 2400 times by families and military units all over the United States during the past three years. Because 2400 is the number, as of writing, of young American servicemen and women killed in Iraq since the first American casualty in the US-led invasion on May 1, 2003.

In the nine days since Kovco died, 17 American servicemen have been killed in action in Iraq: Michael Ford, 19, Richard Herrema, 27, Ray Henry, 21, Meto Bandonill, 29, Aaron Simons, 20, Robert Ehney, 26, Jason Daniel, 21, Shawn Lasswell jnr, 21, Travis Zimmerman, 19, Eric Lueken, 23, Kyle Colnot, 23, Eric King, 29, Jacob Allcott, 21, Matthew Webber, 23, Edward Davis III, 31, Michael Bouthot, 19, and the latest casualty, who died on Saturday, yet to be named. Average age: 23.

Lest we forget them, too. Kovco got an extra two years on these men, enough time to start a family.

Another 214 allied service personnel have died in Iraq, with 17,600 US and allied service personnel wounded, thousands seriously, a total of 20,000 casualties. As for Iraqi deaths since the invasion, the insurgency and the religious civil war, the civilian death toll is reliably estimated at between 34,000 and 38,000 (though others have spun the toll much higher, and lower), another 100,000 wounded, 100,000 made internal refugees, and millions traumatised."

Read this very sobering analysis and numbers which give one pause for thought - by Paul Sheehan in an op-ed piece in the SMH here - of the War John Howard got Australia into as he followed his friend George Bush. And read the way Sheehan sees why we were sucked into the quagmire of what is now the Iraq War.

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