If you recall Monty Python's 4 Yorkshireman sketch about "how young folk these days have it easy compared to when I were a lad" then perhaps you will see why I'm completely underwhelmed with the whole sky is falling in 2000 dead BS being pushed by Al Reuters, AP etc.
Since hostilities kicked off on 20 March 2003 we have had some 950 days (sum done in head E&OE). 2000 dead over 950 days works out at just over2/day. Throw in all the non US coalition military dead and maybe the various UN + civilian contractor dead (all in all less than 1000 as far as I can tell) and you still get to a grand total of foreign "occupiers" being killed in Iraq at an average rate of at most 3 per day.
Compared to just about any other major protracted conflict in the last century or so this is an astonishingly low number. For example:
The Boer war cost the British about 20,000 dead in three years 1899-1902, a rate of about 25/day
90 years ago in WW1 3000 deaths occured in an hour or so on numerous occasions.
Apart from D-day I don't think WW2 has many days where that many troops died in a single day (the Russian front perhaps) but even so 60 years ago deaths of 2000 or 3000 fighters took place in a few days all the time. US casualties alone were around 200/day on average during WW2
In the three year Korean war US casualties alone were over 40,000 killed or MIA with an additional 2700 "coalition" dead, a rate of something like 40/day.
Vietnam saw death rates greater (in many cases far greater) than Iraq's 3/day every year from 1965 to 1972 and note that Vietnam only had serious numbers of US combatants from late 1964, before that there were (IIRC) 5000 or so.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan - possibly the closest parallel in a strictly military sense - the Soviets lost 13,833 dead (officially) over 9 plus years which works out at a rate of 4/day. However there is considerable scepticism at the 13,833 number with some estimates closer to four times that one and there were relatively few deaths in the last year or two as the Russians prepared to leave so that daily rate during the equivalent period of the current Iraqi occupation is almost certainly higher than this.
The French army lost some 18,000 in the 12 year Algerian war (1954-62) along with at least 3000 French civilian deaths (nearly 5/day). This is excluding the huge number of deaths of the Algerians fighting on the French side.
The MSM and its defeatist allies persist in calling Iraq a quagmire and talking about "high" loss of life. All I can say is that I feel like echoing those 4 Yorkshirement: They just don't make quagmires like they used to.
Now how about looking on the positive side - something that the MSM doesn't seem able to so. In exchange for the 3000 dead what has the US led coalition achieved:
a few thousand misguided terrorists of one sort or another have been captured or killed
a brutal dictator who intended to (re)build WMD and who killed thousands of his own people was deposed
an enviromental catastrophe in the southern marshes has been reversed
Iraq is booming economically
demand for cellphones, electrical appliances (and electricity) and so on has skyrocketed
record oil exports
there are hundreds of newspapers, magazines etc.
Iraq has had two free elections with limited violence and relatively high turnout (and turnout increased from the first to the second while violence decreased)
Libya renounced nuclear weapons and gave information about the Pakistan nuclear program
Syria withdrew from Lebanon
Saudi Arabia had elections for the first time (not very good ones but better than 0)
Compared to the lack of results in most of the wars listed above this is one heck of an achievement. I don't like putting it this way because 3000 dead is 3000 more than I would like but in terms of the results it looks like a bargain compared to practically any war fought in recent years.