Another grim mile­stone in the Iraq war is here. Iraq Coali­tion Casu­al­ties reports there are 998 999 U.S. casu­al­ties as of Sept. 7 at 11:45 p.m. local Bagh­dad time (GMT +0300). By the time you read this, there may be 1,000 or more U.S. dead in Iraq.

[UPDATE 12:08 local Bagh­dad time: And it’s here. CNN and “AP”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040907/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=2100 are report­ing 1,000 are dead.]

Accord­ing to my own number-crunching, if the attack in Fal­lu­jah — which “killed 7 U.S. Marines and three Iraqi National Guardsmen”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20040907/ts_washpost/a64921_2004sep6&cid=1802&ncid=1473 — had not occurred yes­ter­day, Amer­ica would have seen its 1,000 death in Iraq right around … Sept. 11. As it is, it looks like this mor­bid sta­tis­tic will sadly come sooner rather than later.

On a side­note — although a related one — it’s becom­ing more and more dan­ger­ous to work here. The feel­ing of ten­sion and men­ace while trav­el­ing around is pal­pa­ble. The threat of kid­nap­ping is being dri­ven home to us by the limbo in which Georges Mal­brunot and Chris­t­ian Ches­not, the two French jour­nal­ists, linger still. One of the rea­sons for a sense of fear is the retrench­ment of the U.S. forces in Bagh­dad. They’re not around as much, not as vis­i­ble. In their place are the Iraqi secu­rity ser­vices such as the Iraqi National Guard and the Iraqi Police.

While it’s a good thing polit­i­cally — for some­one, I hope — that the Amer­i­cans are adopt­ing a lower pro­file, it’s unnerv­ing, con­sid­er­ing the hos­til­ity the Iraqi police have been show­ing to for­eign­ers. I’m not just “talk­ing about Najaf”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000810.php, either. I’ve heard cred­i­ble sto­ries of the police hold­ing guns to pho­tog­ra­phers’ heads and raids on for­eign­ers houses that led to chil­dren being knocked uncon­scious, along with money and phones stolen. And that’s here in Bagh­dad.
I’m due for a break this month for about two weeks and man, do I need it.