About half of all American casualties in Iraq have been due to accidents, and that includes the period of most active hostilities several months ago.

I understand that Military folks die all the time from accident, but that does not mitigate that we have placed troops in Iraq and they are dying there.

That's a pretty silly argument. Military personnel are dying in Iraq because we put them there. They're dying in Afghanistan because we put them there. They're dying in Korea because we put them there. They're dying in the Philippines because we put them there. They're dying in Germany because we put them there. They're dying in England because we put them there. They're dying on the high seas because we put them there. US military personnel are stationed in roughly 100 countries around the world and quite a few of them get killed every year. We put them there, too.

Yes, some of our troops are being killed by hostile action in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places. That's what happens when you commit troops to action in a dangerous region. Unless your view is that the military is just another federal jobs program, you have to face the reality that military personnel face the possibility of death or serious injury regardless of whether we're at war or not. We were attacked. We're going after not only the people who did it but those who might try to do it to us again. We tried looking the other way several times during the 1990s (the military barracks in Saudi Arabia, the attacks on our embassies in Africa, the 1993 WTC attack, and the attack on the USS Cole) and look where that got us. Fortunately, there's a new guy in town. While you may be content to hide under your sheets and beg them not to attack us again, I prefer the current approach.

We can go further and degenerate into name calling, or we can try something constructive. You're very loud in expressing how wrong our policy is. Fine. What would you have done different following the 9-11 attacks? It's easy to tear down the plans of others. Let's see what you think would've been viable alternatives, assuming you actually have any alternatives. This ought to be good.