After months of a steadily rising U.S. casualty count, crossing the 1,000 threshold has perhaps more symbolic significance at home than strategic impact on the battlefield. It drew immediate political response yesterday, and some predicted it would draw the American public's attention back to an Iraqi war that seemed sometimes overshadowed in the summer by political conventions and hurricanes.
"The 1,000-killed milestone will to lead an intensification of the focus on Iraq here at home," O'Hanlon said. "And that matters both for the fall election and also for Americans' willingness to stay the course."
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld put enemy deaths at 1,500 to 2,500 last month.
(Lawrence Jackson -- AP)
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_____Breakdown of Toll_____
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Graphic U.S. military casualties in Iraq have reached 1,001, including three Defense Department civilians.
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Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), on the presidential campaign trail in the Midwest yesterday, called the 1,000 deaths in Iraq a "tragic milestone" for which the nation mourns.
"We must never forget the price they have paid," Kerry said. "And we must meet our sacred obligations to all our troops to do all we can to make the right decisions in Iraq so that we can bring them home as soon as possible."
Despite the rising death toll, Pentagon leaders made it clear yesterday that they do not intend to send U.S. troops to take over such embattled cities as Fallujah and Samarra, where it is believed extremists and terrorists are holed up and strengthening. While the U.S. forces have been engaging the enemy when attacked and hitting selected targets with airstrikes, they generally have stayed out of the strongholds.
Myers said yesterday that coalition forces plan to delay offensive moves in such cities until a full complement of Iraqi forces are trained and ready to defend their nation, something he said he believes can be accomplished by December. He said the "strategy for the cities" being developed by Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. relies on working with the Iraqi government to send in joint forces.
"Part of that strategy is that Iraqi forces must be properly equipped, trained and led to participate in these security operations, and then once it's over, can sustain the peace in a given city," Myers said. "And while U.S. forces or coalition forces on their own can do just about anything they want to do, it makes a lot more sense that it be a sustained operation, one that can be sustained by Iraqi security forces."
This approach appears dictated by Iraqi political considerations.
"As I understand it, the reason why the U.S. has not gone in there to do anything more is because that's what the Iraqis want," Keane said. "There's no doubt that the Marines and the Army have the capacity to stop it. But the Iraqi leadership feels that the price may be too high, and what they really need is an Iraqi solution."
With national elections due in Iraq early next year, Keane said Iraqi authorities will need to go after the insurgent strongholds by then.
"I think you really have to clean things out before the elections and show the Iraqi people that you're not going to tolerate it -- so that they'll have some confidence in their government to protect them," he said.
Myers and Rumsfeld significantly scaled down the progress made in that direction, however, saying that 95,000 Iraqi forces are equipped and trained -- less than half the 200,000 forces U.S. officials had said they had already trained. They said they hope to reach 200,000 trained domestic soldiers in Iraq by mid-2005.
