"bring to about 45 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq"

Or so we read in a Reuters story, U.S. forces in heavy clashes in Baghdad. The key paragraph:

The latest deaths bring to about 45 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq this month, half of them in the Baghdad area. Between 80 and 85 soldiers were killed in each of the first three months of the year, according to military figures.

And we're only 1/3 of the way into April! If you, like this blog, have been checking the Iraq Coalition Casualties website this month, you've observed a consistent high U.S. military death rate ( > 4/day). Already at 45 (plus 6 British), this is not the result of a single helicopter going down, but of a steady, daily rate of loss. Will April turn into a month that upends any happy talk of the "surge" succeeding? It may.


posted by Quiddity at 4/10/2007 08:52:00 AM