I'm anything but a fan of rummy, but he's making a valid point, to a degree. People die in the Armed Forces all the time, whether at home or abroad. They have heart attacks in their barracks, crash cars either on their own time, or during training, are in helicopters with motors that fail, etc. Some of those 2,100 deaths would have happened whether we went into Iraq or not.

Doesn't justify the 1600-1700 _incremental_ deaths, mind you.

Their next 'logical' argument, which I'm almost sure has already been thought of, is that with the number of traffic accidents that occur on U.S. roads, the health risks caused by the abysmal state of the American diet, etc., one could figure that at least a quarter of those soldiers killed or injured in action would have been killed or injured had they not been deployed to Iraq. Therefore there are only about 1100 soldiers who have died in combat who wouldn't likely have died by this time anyway. And hell, we're all going to die someday, so it's all just a wash.

Maybe Rumsfeld had a point to make, but, as usual, he was tactless, arrogant, condescending and obnoxious. Where did George W. find all the bullies and creeps in his administration? Right, his buddies and his fathers' buddies. What can we expect from an administation headed by an obnoxious, smirking, overgrown frat boy who has always relied on the kindness of his daddies' friends? We voted for Georgie; therefore, we deserve him. I hope at least some of the Georgie boys and girls now have buyers' remorse.

While it is very true that some of those "non-combat" deaths might have occurred anyway, it is equally possible that they would not. The fact is that they died in Iraq as a direct result of Bush's war of choice. The same can be said of the combat deaths----these men and women might have died at home, too----but they didn't. They died because Bush sent them to war under false pretenses, and no amount of spin from Rumsfeld or any other of the brownshirt-and-jackboots crowd in the Bush administration will change the sad facts of these unnecessary deaths.

Making the "they would have died anyway" point demeans the sacrifices those men and women have made and are making.

So does the "People join the military because they have nothing better to do and have no other way to contribute to society," argument.

We have women and men over in Iraq putting their lives on the line everyday for no good reason... For reasons based on lies and greed and selfishness.

Please honor their sacrifice and bring them home.

Rumsfeld can try and argue away all he wants the 400 odd deaths that would have happened anyway. But what about the minimum 27,368 civilians (source www.IraqBodyCount.org) who have died as a result of the war? This is more then ten times the amount of US military losses, and these people were not combatants at all. Do these lives not only count less then US military lives, but not count at all?

Its probably because these lives are not "precious" American lives.

"They would have died anyway". Right. Great way to trivialize a soldier's or other servicemember's death. Only someone who is not personally involved in this conflict could ever say that.

Do you think it would have consoled my parents to hear that I had been killed in a motor pool accident, instead of a mortar attack, ambush or by IED? I hardly think so. All of our service men and women have died _over there_....not at home and not near their home or families. Alot of them would still be alive if they hadnt been sent over there, where the constant fear, anxiety, chronic fatigue and emotional roller coaster will compound simple mistakes into deadly accidents.

I was there. Anyone who was or is there right now who said "I will stand with you and among you in the face of danger" deserves more respect than to EVER trivialize their deaths by minimalizing it. Statistics be damned, every fallen soldier, marine, air force personell and sailor who has died *in Iraq* is nothing less than a casualty of this administration's War.

Rich Pastorius

Sergeant, C/244 ECB

I find it ridiculous that Secretary Dumsfield would make this outlandish claim. But it is typical of this administration to try an parse minutiae and spin it their way. They make the Clintons look like amateurs. What is more distressing is that Dumsfield would actually try to denigrate the lives of those soldiers who died in a combat zone, but outside of combat. My uncle, a Huey pilot, was killed in Vietnam in 1966 in a mid-air collision with another Huey. His name is one of those listed on The Wall in D.C. Under Dumsfield's logic, perhaps his name should be removed, since he did not die in combat. That is a thought I find even more distressing. But what do you expect from an administration that never served in combat.

These are statistics. It trivializes the fact that someone's father, mother, daughter, wife, brother, sister, etc. died and for what cause? The cause of death shouldn't really matter. The fact that they died away from home in a war that was waged on false pretenses is what the ultimate crime is.