Juan Cole (with an assist from a reader) notes on his blog today that the anticipated death of the 1,000th American soldier in Iraq already happened sometime in the last few weeks. According to the military and foreign policy watchdog GlobalSecurity.org, by the end of August 1,012 U.S. service members had died.
Why haven't you heard about it? In part, statistical methodology. GlobalSecurity.org states in its methodology section "at times our total count can be rather larger than the numbers reported by some news organizations. We list a number of people as unidentified pending notification of next of kin. We count people as soon as they get killed, while others wait until they are named."
While the "official" 1000th death will probably be announced sometime this month, there's another big story out there along with that somber milestone. In August, GlobalSecurity.org reports, the number of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq doubled to 1,112 from the July total of 533, making it the worst month for American casualties since the war began.
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