Getting close to 2000.
Only 209 to go and that's less than died in one attack in the Marine barracks in Beirut:
"A suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives at a U.S. Marine barracks located at Beirut International Airport; 241 U.S. Marines were killed and more than 100 others wounded. They were part of a contingent of 1,800 Marines that had been sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational force to help separate the warring Lebanese factions."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html

The press will probably consider it worthy of a story as when the number was 500, 1000, or 1500. Of course the Iraqi security forces have higher casualties, with few troops, and less time:
1447 in 2005 and 1300 prior to 2005. Giving total of 2747.
http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

No one should claim the Iraqi solders are not committed to fighting for their country's future.

The UK has also had a total of 93 casualties:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Considering how the Iraqi are stepping up in taking over the country's security, there may be some doubt that we will reach the magic 2000 number, but it's possible we could reach the 2000 number before Christmas. If you just look at the numbers, in last 6 months [Period 4] there has been 354 US soldier deaths, and it's been during a time of some large operations and heavy fighting; [Period 3] roughly 6 months before had 579 US Soldier deaths, so the amount US casualties is lowering, but total casualties has increased.

The use of body armor has significantly lowered the number of US fatalities. As a guess I would say we would have around twice the amount of fatalities if soldiers lacked body armor. Probably the lack of body armor for all of Iraqi security forces [there are some elite units with body armor] is part of the reason why Iraqis have much higher deaths- lack of training is probably another large factor.