Why make a fuss over the 2,000th casualty?

We've reached the 2,000th casualty and American death toll is continuing to rise. Why is that number important? Why is the 2,000th soldier to die any different than the first? The 2,001st?

Every one of those numbers represent not just a statistic, but a person who was loved by someone, who loved others in return, and who served their country willingly. They were not drafted. They all had their reasons for volunteering; it's safe to say that part of the reason was they loved their country and wanted to defend it.

The 2,000th casualty, Staff Sergeant George T. Alexander, Jr was no lesser or greater than the first casualties, Major Jay Thomas Aubin (USMC), Captain Ryan Anthony Beaupre (USMC), Corporal Brian Matthew Kennedy (USMC), Staff Sergeant Kendall Damon Watersbey (USMC), Second Lieutenant Therrel S. Childers (USMC), Lance Corporal Jose Gutierrez (USMC) and Lieutenant Thomas Mullen Adams (USN).

So why is the number 2,000 important, aside from the fact that we love to mark milestones, however macabre? It's not because the 2,000th death is more important than the first and will be less important than the 3,000th. (God forbid we have that many, however I fear we will.)

It's important because with each death we are forced to think back and remember why we went to war in the first place. This is where it starts getting disturbing. This is where we have to look back at the reasons given to justify the war. It's now obvious that lies and misinformation formed the basis for this war.

Were the lies inadvertent or deliberate? Was the misinformation known to be wrong but was used anyway because it was politically expedient? That is what we must find out. We need to know if individuals within the administration can be proven without a shadow of a doubt to have misled the American people and the rest of the world into entering the war under false pretexts. We need an independent investigation to determine this. Fitzgerald may just have touched on the tip of the iceberg and we need to see the entire picture, no matter how high in the government the evidence leads, even if it leads to the Oval Office itself.

That's why the 2,000th death marked such a milestone. Because there were many of us who didn't believe the administration's reasons for going to war in the first place. There was evidence by sources that contradicted what the administration was presenting, but people were cajoled into joining the bandwagon. Now many are jumping off that same bandwagon.

Each of the deaths that occurred as a result of this war is one more nail in the coffin in which the truth was buried for a political agenda based on greed and deceit.

As long "Bush's Folly" is allowed to continue, the United States will continue to rot from within unless people stand up and DEMAND THE TRUTH. That is why the 2,000th death is an important milestone. It showed that people are now waking up to the fact that we were lied to. The United States is no longer fit to consider itself the moral compass of the world. We need find a way to stop the next milestone, before the soul of our country is forever tainted.