Unnoticed Milestone: 3,500

The American war tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan have now crept over 3,500 - remember when 1,000 was a startling milestone? The count now includes ten more troops with Washington state connections killed in 2007 and just added to our War Dead pages. Altogether, 173 members of the military with state connections have died in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Iraq since October 2001. Ages 18 to 53, they left behind 105 children, 77 widows, and two widowers. Another reminder, as Bertrand Russell put it, that war doesn't determine who is right, only who is left.