US soldiers in Dover, Delaware, take charge of comrades' coffins. Photograph: AP
In the words of Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials, the US military doesn't "do body counts" of enemy fighters and civilians; the one they do, that of the US service men and women killed in Iraq, reached 2,000 yesterday with the announcement of the death of Staff Sergeant George Alexander, 34, in a Texas hospital from injuries sustained in a roadside bombing.
The 2,000th fatality is, of course, no more tragic than was the 1,999th for the victims and their families, fellow soldiers and friends; it does, however, represent a grim numerical milestone.
Some of the pro-war bloggers anticipated this in advance, labelling, as did Little Green Footballs, anti-war groups "ghouls" for planning public events (it called them "parties") to commemorate the dead. Readers used the comments section to attack the "depravity" of the participants.
One of the main organisers of the events, the American Friends Service Committee, is today holding at least 375 gatherings across the US. It wants to pressure Congress to cut off funding for the war and thereby end it. Cindy Sheehan is to use the 2,000 death as a pretext to attempt to strike a protest camp outside the White House in the name of her dead soldier son, Casey. Camp Casey outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, became a focus in August for both the anti- and pro-war movements, with some members of the latter group considering Ms Sheehan a tool of the left.
The 2,000th death is a political as well as a human statistic. Depending on your viewpoint, you either draw attention to it to criticise the war or draw attention to those drawing attention to it and criticise them for criticising the war.
Or, like George Bush, you acknowledge the deaths but insist progress in Iraq will need "more sacrifice, more time and more resolve".
The US senate held a minute's silence in honour of the 2,000 service men and women killed in Iraq.
But it is not the only body count: Mohammed Haroun Hassan, editor-in-chief of the Nabdh al-Shabab newspaper, this week became the 100th journalist or media worker to die in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Anti-war activists yesterday attempted to mark the first anniversary of the publication of the Lancet's estimate of 100,000 excess civilian deaths (ie 100,000 above the normal prewar rate) with an unauthorised bell-ringing in Whitehall.
The Lancet's figure was not a toll but a statistical projection, like an opinion poll, based on interviews with a sample of 998 households on births and deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion.
It found increases in infant mortality rates and the numbers of those who had met violent deaths. The projection, based on the research data, was from 8,000 to 194,000, with the 100,000 figure - perhaps the most often-quoted statistic of the last 12 months - chosen as a midpoint. The researchers and many others, including some who supported the war, were nevertheless confident with the methodology.
The most concrete toll of civilian deaths comes from Iraq Body Count, a team of academics who count the numbers of civilian dead in media reports. The total excludes combatants (those who died fighting coalition or Iraqi government forces) and is cross-checked against mortuaries and on-the-ground researchers.
Since its total of civilian deaths only includes fatalities recorded by two separate sources, and not all deaths are reported, the group regards the figure as conservative: it currently stands at between 26,690 and 30,015 since March 2003.
I spoke to John Sloboda, one of the lead researchers, in July when the group put the numbers of civilian dead in the two years since the invasion at just under 25,000. His study blamed coalition military forces for 37% of deaths (peaking between March and May 2003), criminal violence for 36% and insurgent attacks for 9%, with the numbers killed by suicide bombs and other terrorist activity increasing as insurgents moved to softer, non-military targets. The Iraqi interior ministry put the average civilian and police officer death toll in insurgent attacks from August 2004 to March 2005 at 800 a month. The 20 people killed in the suicide attacks earlier this week on the walls protecting the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, the base for many broadcasters and news agencies, will be added to the total.
The US military may not do body counts on other people (or at least make them officially available; soldiers are indeed asked to report enemy kills), but a recent report in the Washington Post said a practice discredited by Vietnam is showing signs of a comeback: when the US was fighting in south-east Asia, the Pentagon released a running daily toll of enemy dead to demonstrate progress. The announcements were abandoned when it became apparent that the figures were being inflated.
Eager to demonstrate success against insurgents, numbers of dead enemy fighters started to creep back informally into military briefings after the fighting in Falluja, adding to the various death tolls to emerge from Iraq since the invasion.
