When I read or hear the word “anniversary” I like to think about first dates — the kind with flowers and hickies, not the kind with piles of dead bodies and government corruption so complex it’ll take us decades to sort it all out. I just read the New York Times’ Bush Aides Defend Iraq War on Eve of Anniversary and the death toll numbers they cite caught my eye; these numbers are highly debatable. So, crossing the four-year mark, rather than start looking for that perfect five-year anniversary gift of wood (like a coffin), I thought I’d put some numbers together here instead — since March 20, 2003:
American military deaths:
NYT — “more than 3,000”
Department of Defense (compiled: icasualties.org) — 3218
Death toll 9/11 attacks:
Wikipedia — 2,992
Iraqi deaths:
NYT — “tens of thousands”
George W. Bush (CBS, December 2006) — 30,000
Washington Post (October 2006) — 655,000
For interesting comparisons, here’s Wikipedia’s List of wars and disasters by death toll.