The United States has lost about 4000 men fighting terrorists over the last six years. I saw Representative Pete Stark on TV today frothing at the mouth about our losses, which were for no good reason in his view. (From accounts I have read Pete Stark seems to be prone to ad hominem attacks.) In any historical perspective the US losses have been light. Consider some statistics. Today I heard that 40,000 people per year die from Staph infections. That would be 240,000 people in the last six years. There have also been over 240,000 killed in auto accidents over that period. And, in the US over 100,000 people have been murdered during that time. We have had nearly 1000 police officers killed in the line of duty over the past six years. The loss of military personnel in Iraq is a tragedy for the family involved, but is not statistically significant for the United States, a nation of over 300 million. Whether or not our incursion into Iraq was worth it or not will not be known for many years. If there is no major war with Islam, it will have been worth the cost.