Iraq Coalition Casualties - now stands at 2062
So far this month (November) 33 US troops and one British soldier were killed. The total number of casualties as of today stands at 2062 and the total number of seriously wounded US soldiers at 15568. Since the beginning of the war more than 15000 innicent civilians have been killed in Iraq.
In a Veterans Day speech at an Army depot in PA, Mr. Bush made his most aggressive effort to date to counter the charge that he had justified taking the United States to war by twisting or exaggerating prewar intelligence. That line of attack has deepened his political woes by helping to sow doubts about his credibility and integrity at a time when public support for the war is ebbing. Mr. Bush's comments, using language far more direct and provocative than in his previous efforts to parry the criticism, brought an angry response from Democratic leaders in Congress, who said questions about his use of prewar intelligence were entirely legitimate and proper. "Attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war does not provide us a plan for success that will bring our troops home," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, said in a statement. "Americans seek the truth about how the nation committed our troops to war because the decision to go to war is too serious to be entered into under faulty pretenses." in early 2003, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, rejected elements of a speech drafted by aides to Vice President Dick Cheney that was intended to present the administration's case for war, calling them exaggerated and unsubstantiated by intelligence. And some assertions by administration officials, like Mr. Cheney's statement in 2002 that Mr. Hussein could acquire nuclear weapons "fairly soon" and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's statement the same year that Iraq "has chemical and biological weapons," have been proven overstated or wrong. Mr. Bush's comments on Friday only intensified the partisan battle. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush's Democratic rival in the presidential campaign last year, accused him of "playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day." Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, called Mr. Bush's speech "a campaignlike attempt to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek truth about the clear manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war."
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