Five years on from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the country faces another
sombre milestone: U.S. fatalities in Iraq reach 4,000. 

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, UNITED STATES (MARCH 14, 2008)
(REUTERS) -

The number of U.S. soldiers to die in Iraq has reached 4,000, the
U.S. military said on Monday (March 24), just days after the fifth anniversary
of a war that President George W. Bush says the United States is on track to
win.
    The U.S. military said in a statement four soldiers were killed late on
Sunday (March 23) when a roadside bomb, the biggest killer of American
soldiers in Iraq, exploded near their vehicle in southern Baghdad. One soldier
was wounded in the attack.
    What impact the grim milestone will have on a war-weary American public
and the U.S. presidential campaign will be hard to assess in the short term,
but war critics are likely to seize on it to boost their case for U.S. troops
to be withdrawn. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the
unrelenting violence.
    U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday (March 19) he had no
regrets about the unpopular war in Iraq despite the "high cost in lives
and treasure" and declared that the United States was on track for
victory.
    For Phil Aliff, a young veteran of the Iraq war who has been diagnosed
with post traumatic stress disorder, the rising death toll is draining
military morale.
    "I think it's incredibly demoralising to be asked to go back to
Iraq for your third, fourth, fifth deployment and have to watch more friends
die, more casualties being mounted up on a war that we were given false
pretences to go in the first place. And so I think that to honour the memory
of those that have died in Iraq and to honour our soldiers that are still over
there, I think we have to bring our brothers and sisters home
immediately," he says.
    While the war remains a key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign,
polls show the faltering U.S. economy has supplanted Iraq at the top of
Americans' concerns.
    "The 4000 fatality milestone for U.S. troops in Iraq is, of
course, a very sad and sombre one and I think people will note it but I
frankly think we are saddened by each loss of life and we've had multiple
milestones before and therefore I think we have to keep this in perspective.
It's not going to be seen as a major symbolic plateau or threshold or new
milestone, it's just going to be another reminder of the grim toll of
war," says Michael O'Hanlon a U.S. national security policy expert at the
Brookings Institute.
    For the families of those killed in Iraq, though, the wounds are still
fresh.
    Bradley Korthaus, from Davenport, Iowa, was one of the first U.S.
casualties in the war. He drowned on March 24, 2003 at the age of 28 while
crossing the Saddam Canal in Iraq.
    "There's a reason why my son gave his life for his country. But I
know very well that he would do it all over again," his mother Marilyn
says. "I'm sure that he's proud of his brother. And his children. And I
hope he's proud of me."
    Violence across Iraq has dropped 60 percent since 30,000 extra U.S.
troops became fully deployed in June. But a recent spate of attacks shows that
Iraq is far from safe.
    Bush has long described Iraq as a central front in the battle against
Islamic extremists. It is a view shared by many war supporters.
    "If we'd done nothing, there may have been ten thousand, fifty
thousand, a hundred thousand here as opposed to just there. Those soldiers are
doing what they feel is right  and I feel is right. I've done the same thing
they have and I would do it again," says Jerry Bell, waving a U.S. flag
at a demonstration in support of troops in Iraq.
    "There's a terrible war going on and that's very true and every
life lost is precious. We all know that. But three thousand, almost four
thousand people were killed just in one shot in New York. I mean, we have to
do something," says Dan Small.
    The U.S. military is on track to complete the withdrawal of about
20,000 troops by July, leaving about 140,000 in Iraq, as ordered by Bush in
September. Bush is expected to reiterate that any decision on bringing more
troops home would depend on recommendations from commanders on the ground.
    For O'Hanlon, there is no clear correlation between prospects for
success in Iraq and the level of U.S. fatalities.
     "In the 1990s, we actually managed to have several military
victories with far fewer American fatalities, even in aggregate than we've had
in this one conflict alone. We won Desert Storm, we then managed to achieve at
least some of our  outcomes in the Bosnia war and also in the Kosovo war and
also then in the Afghanistan war and the sum total of those four wars together
-- even though the Afghanistan one is, of course, still underway, is less than
a thousand fatalities. So I don't think there's any huge correlation between
the number of people we've lost and the prospects for success," he
says.