This is an interesting depiction of Iraqi War casualties from March 2003 through June 2005. It is apparent that the "insurgency" is mainly concentrated in the so-called Sunni triangle - with lots of activity in Bagdhad, obviously.

There seem to be many in the government that are talking down our military. This is not terribly surprising because the "war" isn't a galvanizing war such as WWI, and especially WWII. It is not clear that any war we might be involved in would be as "galvanizing" as previous conflicts. Whether sitting members of Congress made a habit of stating that "we are losing" in WWI, or WWII, I don't doubt that it happened. I know that there was continual bickering during the Civil War - but it is still bad form in my opinion.

At a 2000 Liberty Fund conference I argued that the U.S. didn't have the stomach for D-Day style tactics and casualties. Our capital intensive military, which became necessary after the draft was ended, had basically reduced the casualty count to such an extent that it would be difficult to imagine the U.S. population "accepting" 4,000 dead in a day.

I wonder if we wil see more calls for our extrication from Iraq given the female casualties we suffered last week. This was the center of another discussion between myself and a few others at the Liberty Fund conference - whether the U.S. military should place women in combat situations. My claim was that sufficiently high female casualties would turn popular support against any war (rather than against withdrawing female soldiers and marines), which if known by our potential enemies would make our military a less effective deterrent.

If female casualties mount in Iraq, it will be interesting to see if those who insisted on women having equal access to military MOS's and enemy fire are the first to insist that we must withdrawl because of female casualties.