U.S. troop deaths in Iraq reach 800

http://www.knxv.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=IRAQ-DEATHS-05-27-04&cat=AN

The official death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq reached 800 on Thursday during a month that ranks as the deadliest for National Guard and reserve troops since the war began.

With four days of the month remaining, 22 so-called "weekend warriors" have already perished in May. They represented more than 1 in 3 of the 69 deaths so far in May. In April, part-time troops accounted for fewer than 1 in 5 of the fallen.

The growing toll of part-time troops was predicted by military officials, stemming from an influx of thousands of reservists as part of a massive rotation of U.S. forces over the past few months. With the replacement operation nearly done, the force of 138,000 consists of nearly 40 percent civilian-soldiers.

The overall number of Operation Iraqi Freedom fatalities for May is about half the deaths of April, by far the war's bloodiest month, with 134 dead. Even so, May now stands as the third-worst for American GI combat deaths.

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just become conditioned to the news.

There was quite an uproar then, none now...Sad...