While the past three days have been fairly average in terms of violence in Iraq, with the exception of the 21 Marines killed, a sampling of events in Iraq over the past three days present the reality of occupied Iraq quite clearly:

• 14 Marines and an Iraqi interpreter were killed in by a roadside bomb
• 6 Marines were killed in an ambush in Haditha, 1 was killed by a roadside bomb in Hit, and 1 Army soldier was killed in by a car bomb near the Syrian border
• A US journalist was killed in Basra
• A car bomb in Iraq killed 4 people and wounded 23 in Baghdad on Tuesday
• One civilian was killed and one was wounded in by a car bomb in Baquba that also injured four Iraqi police
• Gunmen opened fire on a group of people leaving a hospital after viewing the body of a Sunni Cleric who was killed Monday. Five were killed in the attack.
• An Iraqi police colonel and two employees of the finance ministry were killed in Baghdad on their way to work.
• 4 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 5 wounded in a bombing in the town of Balad.
• An attack in Samarra damaged a pipeline used to supply fuel to Baghdad
• The chief of the Abu Ghraib police station was killed
• The head of the Khaluss Hospital was killed in Baquba

With the military clearly being unable to defeat the insurgency, there has recently been increased discussion about the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq from officials in the military and the Bush administration. However, these calls are being made largely for public relations purposes, with the hope that talk of a withdrawal will deflect attention from the ongoing occupation while allowing the occupation to continue. This strategy could be especially important with the 2006 Congressional elections, as many Republican and Democrat supporters of the war may run the risk of being voted out of office if the election is decided primarily on the basis of the Iraq war.

It is the ongoing human cost of the war in Iraq that may make some Congress members vulnerable in 2006. The total number of United States soldiers killed in Iraq has reached 1,821. The rough number of police and Iraqi soldiers killed in 2005 has reached 1,479, although the numbers, based primarily on corporate media reporting and CENTCOM news releases, may be incomplete. An estimated 26,264 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the invasion in March of 2003. These numbers will no doubt increase during the upcoming year, as will the financial costs (currently at $185 billion).