Ugly, but a site you must visit

I can't keep up with the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Coalition Casualty Count News does.

This guy (assumption) sorts through all the reports and makes sense of the attacks and bodies. It isn't pretty, but...

Consider this a service to my readers?

There's a site called Coalition Casualty Count News. Most often I avoid it because its far too depressing.

However, if you want to know where people are being killed in Iraq and not just in Baghdad its the place to go. In addition, the site lists the names of the soldiers killed as soon as they can get that info from the government.

Too often we read about some soldier being blown into tiny pieces¹ and have no idea where they came from. This site will identify the hometowns of the fallen.

Like I said, its a depressing, albeit very useful, site.

Now where the hell did I put my Prozac®?

¹ Can't find the link right now, but one soldier said she hates the plastic bags they carry in the Hummers so they can collect the body parts of fallen comrades.

This can't be good news for the SURGE™ troops

What it amounts to is Bush's SURGE™ is sending all these young people into a meat grinder.

More American troops were killed in combat in Iraq over the past four months - at least 334 through Jan. 31 - than in any comparable stretch since the war began, according to an Associated Press analysis of casualty records.

Not since the bloody battle for Fallujah in 2004 has the death toll spiked so high.

The reason is that U.S. soldiers and Marines are fighting more battles in the streets of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and other cities. And while hostile forces are using a variety of weaponry, the top killer is the roadside bomb.

In some respects it is the urban warfare that U.S. commanders thought they had managed to largely avoid after U.S. troops entered Baghdad in early April 2003 and quickly toppled the Saddam Hussein regime.

And with President Bush now sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad and western Anbar province, despite opposition in Congress and the American public's increasing war weariness, the prospect looms of even higher casualties.

(read more)