Iraq I: Month 51 of the War By the Numbers

Four-year fatality trend and woman grieves at the coffin of dead trooper

In another bloody milestone, 101 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq in June -- the first time that there have been over 100 deaths for three consecutive months since the war began.

Meanwhile, Charles Amico at We the People has done some four-year number crunching and as the fever char shows the trend is markedly grim, grim, grim.

In other war news of consequence:

* Iraqi civilian casualties decreased in June, but the decline was hard to verify because civilian death counts are notoriously inaccurate.

* With additional troops now fully in place, the predicatable became the inevitable -- the last-gasp surge strategy is having only sporadic success and certainly not nearly enough success to turn the tide.

* The September deadline for assessing the state of the war enunciated by President Bush earlier in the year evaporated in a cloud of doublespeak.

* The Bush administration undertook a campaign to blow smoke up the collective American backside by calling all insurgents Al Qaeda.

* Senator Richard Lugar, one of President Bush’s staunchest supporters became the latest Republican to acknowledge the obvious -- the war is a disaster -- although he later toned down his remarks.

* Destruction of the major structures of the Golden Dome complex in Samarra was completed with the bombing of the two minarets by Al Qaeda insurgents.

* * * * *

Herewith our monthly numbers roundup, or what's left of it because U.S. and Iraq officials have been withholding an increasing number of statistics. (June 2007 totals are in orange; May 2007 totals are in black):

JUNE 2007 ROUNDUP

1,342 -- (1,975) Iraqis killed (*)
101 (131) -- U.S. troops killed

TWO-MONTH (May-June) ROUNDUP

3,317 -- (March-April: 3,796) Iraqis killed (*)
239 (March-April: 228) -- U.S. troops killed

U.S. WAR-TO-DATE ROUNDUP
3,578 (3,475) -- Total killed

COST
$439,320,000,000 ($430,492,000,000)

(*) Includes Iraqi Army personnel, security forces, national police and civilians. Sources: National Priorities Project, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, Defense Manpower Data Center.

Chart by Charles Amico. Photo by Tim Larsen/AP