http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/26/7898/
cost of war, zia mian

"Five years into the war, 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed and over 30,000 wounded. Now 160,000 U.S. soldiers are fighting in Iraq on extended tours of duty. The U.S. army has started to crack under the strain. Faced with home-made bombs and suicide bombers, the United States has turned to increased aerial bombing. The Washington Post reported there were five times more U.S. air strikes in Iraq in 2007 than in 2006, involving an increase from an average of four a week in 2006 to about four bombs a day in 2007, with bombs ranging between 500 to 2000 pounds of explosive each. In what it called “one of the largest strikes since the 2003 invasion,” the Post reported that in January 2008 U.S. planes dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives in 10 minutes on one area. Such attacks are a sure recipe for higher civilian casualties."