Just a few words, on the occasion of four years since the coalition invasion of Iraq. During that four year period, 3200 American fighting men and women have been killed, leaving their parents, their husbands, and wives, their children, to wonder about life and it's meaning.

Since President Bush announced Mission accomplished (May 1, 2003), 3070 American service personnel have been killed.

The official count of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines wounded in action is 24,000. The unofficial estimate of wounded Americans (these are not coalition figures, rather American figures) ranges as high as 100,000.

The estimate of Iraqi deaths is conservatively placed at about 65,000. However, the Iraqi Government places the "number of lives lost that would not have been lost had it not been for the war" as high as 300,000.

We might view the value of these Iraq lives as less important than the value of the American lives, but, that does not make sense. True, some terrorists have real enemy status. But the majority of the Iraqi lost were protecting their homes from invading forces.

Yes, these are strong words. My sons served and survived. Others have not been so lucky.

The following is from an article by Damien Cave
for the New York Times:

"...The past year of dizzying violence here has produced thousands of Iraqis like Ms. Rashid — sad-eyed seekers caught in an endless loop of inquiry and disappointment. Burdened by grief without end or answers, they face a set of horrors as varied and fractured as Iraq itself.
Has my son or husband or father been killed by a death squad, his body hidden? Or has he been arrested? Is he in a legitimate prison with his name unregistered, or trapped in a secret basement jail with masked torturers?
Most importantly: How can he be found?
.... But since the war, and particularly following the sharp rise in sectarian fighting over the past year, searching has become an obsession.

.. American-run prisons hold only a small portion of Iraq’s detainees. Because many victims of the violence here are never identified, and because the Iraqi detention system remains corrupt, sectarian and opaque, according to Iraqi and American officials, most Iraqis never find who they are looking for.
“There are so many different sides that are fighting now, without names or uniforms,” said Muhammad Haideri, a Shiite cleric and chairman of the human rights committee in the Iraqi Parliament. “There’s terrorism; there are kidnappings, armed militias and gangs. On top of that, when a bomb explodes, people end up deformed, and they are considered missing, too.”