I could have made the point in many other ways. An average of 163 cops die each year, and this will never end as long as crime exists. An average of 1,500 soldiers have died each year in the operation of our military since 1980. Of these, two percent were due to hostile action or terrorism (this includes the Lebanon bombing and the Gulf War.) Most were accidents, illnesses, homicides, and suicides. I doubt their relatives are any less distressed than the ones whose loved ones died in Iraq. Perspective.

It's been four months since we started combat in Iraq, defeated an entire nation, occupied it, and started the rebuilding process. In accomplishing this, we have lost 242 military personnel, counting accidents.

If this is generating "war weariness," I would have to say our threshold of war weariness has dropped considerably in the past fifty years.

Also, it is a myth--encouraged by the media--that all of our casualties are just soldiers sitting around scratching themselves while the enemy pops them off. Certainly some cases are like this--I heard on the radio that the hospital guards were playing cards when somebody dropped a grenade from one of the windows. But we have been engaging guerrilla forces, capturing hundreds, and confiscating and destroying weapons and other equipment. Of course, this latter part doesn't get the right "quagmire" image across, so you won't see much about it in the media.

By the way, we have now officially exceeded the loss of life in the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon (241).