Not counting the injured. Or the Iraqis.

Original photo by Michael Kamber/NYT via Truthout

Brandon Friedman reports:

American forces have just experienced the most violent two-week period in Iraq since September 2007. Unfortunately, I'm afraid this fact will be lost in the media coverage over the number 4,000 during the next several days. Of the two significant numbers this week--4,000 killed during war and 25 in the last two weeks--the latter figure is far more significant with regard to the current situation on the ground.
...
Between March 10 and March 23, 25 American soldiers were killed in Iraq. The last two-week period in which U.S. forces sustained similar losses was between September 14 and September 27, when 26 were killed--a period that capped off the bloodiest summer of the war. [emphasis in the original]

Craig Unger writes:

...[T]he neocons had deliberately gamed the system. As their policy papers show, they knew they wanted to start the war long before the administration took office and in order to do so they knew they had to control intelligence. That's why Wolfowitz, Perle, and Eliot Abrams began making semi-secret trips to Austin as early as 1998 to convince Bush that an invasion was necessary. That's why, in December 2000, they tried to put Wolfowitz in as head of the CIA. And that's why, when that didn't work, they moved him to the Pentagon where he oversaw the creation of the Office of Special Plans which was in charge of putting out phony intelligence.

Likewise, Cheney put John Bolton in at State to keep an eye on Colin Powell and to make sure that State Department analysts at INR( who had repeatedly discovered the errors in the phony neocon intelligence) were kept out of all the key meetings. As a result, Colin Powell made his presentation to the UN based on intel that came from the neocons in Cheney's office and the Pentagon--not the professionals at Langley and at [the State Department's intelligence analysis branch,] INR.

In other words, we went to war not because of intelligence failures ... but because of intelligence successes--successful black propaganda operations, successful disinformation operations--that were deliberately designed to mislead the American people.

Four thousand and counting. Because of lies.
--the BB