U.S. Fatalities for May sets record high

UPDATE to this post: June 3rd
The numbers reported for May have changed by the Dept. of Defense. The new May total is 127, which brings the 1 year total now to 1002, not 999 as is reported below.

June 1, 2007
U.S. fatalities for May hit a new high for the year as 124 brave young men and women were killed in Iraq. This is the highest fatality month since November 2004 and is the third highest month of the entire war. As you can see from the yearly chart above, the trend continues to alarm me as memories of Vietnam keep surfacing in my mind. From June of last year to the end of May this year we have had 999 total fatalities. The calls for ending the war, a timetable, benchmarks or anything that would slow, stop reverse, troop deployment falls on deaf ears. The public is furious, the Democrats seem frustrated trying to respond to their base and have calculated this is best for them politically rather than taking a stand. Oh how wrong they are. Republicans aren't in any better position as they have supported the Bush/Cheney war since its inception. The only question some of them face is when do they jump ship of their unconditional support of this President for their political future, instead of worrying about the troops future, as they should.

As frustrations build, as the army continues to be broken, as we run out of soldiers to deploy, as relieving the troops there becomes more difficult and extensions are added, the pressure is building and any smart leader will calculate their chances for a run as a third party candidate. It could be Hagel and Bloomberg or it might be someone new. No elected official wants to discuss the possibility of solving the problem by instituting a DRAFT. But the most respected General Batiste has and does continue to say we need to do this. In my humble opinion, this is the catalyst needed to get protesters out in the street to stop this war. All of us who want this war over should be proactively asking and pushing for a DRAFT as part of a proposal which defines 3 years minimum of National Service either in a Peace Corps or in the service of the military.

Yes my friends, to galvanize opinions and get hundreds of thousands of student protesters to take to the streets, we should be pushing the strategic thought forward with all elected officials. The Military needs this badly as it is broken and needs to be fixed. Help me push this idea forward.

The source for the data on fatalities comes from icasualties.org