‘Why Are People Dying?’

Even as Americans viewed the conflict with Iraq as mostly over and the nation’s attention turned elsewhere, the Department of Defense reported the deaths of about 40 service members in the past six weeks. About three-fourths of the deaths came after May 1, the day President Bush formally declared the end of major combat operations. Deaths over the past six weeks were fewer than at the height of the struggle: three times as many Americans were killed in the month after the war began. But for families who had just begun to allow themselves to think their loved ones might be safe, the news was all the more jarring, the numbers impossible to consider. NY Times