Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Bush says 4,000 US deaths in Iraq will 'merit the sacrifice'

WASHINGTON (AP) - Marking a grim milestone, a determined President George W. Bush says the lives of 4,000 U.S. military men and women who have died in Iraq "were not lost in vain." The White House made clear that additional American troops will not be pulled out of the war soon.

A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers Sunday night, which pushed the death toll to 4,000.

That number pales compared with the number of Iraqi casualties or American dead of other lengthy U.S. wars. It is much higher than many Americans, including Bush, ever expected after the swift U.S. invasion of Iraq five years ago.

Bush proclaimed the end of major combat operations in Iraq in May 2003. Almost all the U.S. deaths there have happened since then.

"One day people will look back at this moment in history and say, 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve, because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come,"' Bush said after a State Department briefing about long-term diplomacy efforts.

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