CNN’s page doesn’t say a thing about it today. CBS has a little Iraq news, but isn’t covering the body count. USA Today has nothing on Iraq at all. MSNBC and Fox cover Iraq stories, but not the big one. Only ABC is talking about it.

If I hadn’t checked the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count page I would not have even noticed it.

Our soldiers are getting slaughtered out there.

Since November 8, when Bush threw the troops into the Fallujah maelstrom after having decided it wouldn’t hurt him so much politically anymore, 95 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, almost all of them from hostile fire. We are losing an average of more than ten soldiers a day. Even though the casualties started only ten days ago and the first week of the month had few deaths, November has already become the bloodiest month of the war since it started in March 2003. At this rate, November will become the first month in which more than 200 soldiers die–and there is no indication that this will abate anytime soon.

It is also significant to note that in the first three years of the Vietnam War, from 1962 to 1964 (when we had 17,000 troops in-country), the casualty rate was 0.38 per day. Even after massive escalation began in 1965, the average casualty rate was 5 per day. Over the course of the entire Vietnam War, an average of 15 soldiers died every day. Factor in the fact that there were far more troops total in Vietnam, and the numbers become even more significant.

Bush apologists will talk about how many more died in WWII, or on that one day in the Civil War–but that comparison is ludicrous as those wars are quantitatively different: they were not wars fighting local insurgencies in a single country, and they involved far, far more troops. They were not wars of attrition or occupation. Like Vietnam, Iraq requires few in the first few years–but it is very likely that more and more troops will be required as time goes on, just as in Vietnam.