And for what? Where is this going? The Bush team has lost the confidence of the American public due to spin, twisting and general incompetence and arrogance, so where do we go from here?
Figures released by the Pentagon show that 776 soldiers were wounded in action in Iraq last month.
The September figure represents the fourth largest casualty rate since the US and UK invasion in the spring of 2003 and the largest since November 2004 when US forces were involved in a major offensive to clear the city of Fallujah. Some experts believe the number of wounded provides a better insight to the nature of the conflict in Iraq than the figure of 2,700 killed because - in relation to previous wars - many more wounded troops survive.
The ratio of wounded to killed is 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 during the Vietnam War. Anthony Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told The Washington Post: "These days wounded are a much better measure of the intensity of the operations than killed."
