Rumsfeld Defends 1000 Iraq Deaths
Rodney Dalton, New York correspondent for "The Australian"
SEEKING to limit the political fallout from the 1000th US military death in Iraq yesterday, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said more Americans had died already in the "global war of terror".Casualties were the price of "taking the offence" to terrorists, Mr Rumsfeld said in unprompted comments at a Pentagon briefing.
He said the "civilised world passed the thousandth casualty mark a long time ago".
"Hundreds were killed in Russia last week ... and this week we remember the 3000 citizens of dozens of countries who were killed on September 11, 2001,"
By meshing Iraq and the war on terrorism, Mr Rumsfeld was adhering to the US administration's theme that George W. Bush was acting on lessons learned from the September 11 attacks when he ousted Saddam Hussein last year.
An escalation in fighting with Sunni and Shi'ite insurgents killed 17 US soldiers in the past four days, pushing the official death toll since the war began to at least 1003.
That number includes 1000 soldiers and three civilians, two working for the army and one for the air force.
The US military does not report Iraqi deaths, but conservative estimates by private groups put the toll at at least 10,000.
The vast majority of US deaths -- all but 138 -- came after Mr Bush's May 1, 2003, "mission accomplished" declaration of an end to major combat operations.
The rising death toll is symbolically important as the US President stakes his re-election on being better equipped to fight the war on terrorism and Democratic challenger John Kerry struggles to settle on a coherent position on a conflict that has divided the US.
Senator Kerry said yesterday reaching 1000 casualties in Iraq was a "tragic milestone".
"We must never forget the price they have paid," he said. "And we must meet our sacred obligation 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."
With polls showing the economy is more important to voters than Iraq, Senator Kerry once again attempted to shift the attention to Mr Bush's patchy economic record, seizing on figures showing a record federal budget deficit of $US422 billion ($610 billion).
Exploiting the presidential initial, he said: "W stands for wrong, the wrong direction for America". Republicans spun the deficit figure as good news because it was less than earlier forecasts of up to $US470 billion.
In Missouri, Mr Bush answered Senator Kerry's charge that Iraq was the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" by making the now familiar allegation that the Democrat contender is a "flip-flopper".
In Iowa, Vice-President Dick Cheney took a harder line, warning the US would suffer a devastating "hit" if the US made the "wrong choice" and elected Senator Kerry on November 2.
Mr Cheney was in the news for other reasons, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that his former company Halliburton stood to lose billions as the US army rearranged its much-criticised allocation of government contracts in Iraq.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned yesterday that the violence in Iraq might threaten elections planned in January 2005.
In a report to the UN Security Council, he said the security environment in Iraq had not improved much since the US-led invasion in March 2003 and he urged the US to rely more on the political process than on force.