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How to destroy the National Guard and Reserves. It's very easy to annihilate the reserves of American military strength — just make George W Bush the Commander-in-Chief:

The National Guard and Reserves are suffering a strikingly higher share of U.S. casualties in Iraq, their portion of total American military deaths nearly doubling since last year.

Reservists have accounted for one-quarter of all U.S. deaths since the Iraq war began, but the proportion has grown over time. It was 10 percent for the five weeks it took to topple Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and 20 percent for 2004 as a whole.

The trend accelerated this year. For the first nine months of 2005, reservists accounted for 36 percent of U.S. deaths, and for August and September, it was 56 percent, according to Pentagon figures.

The Army National Guard, Army Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve accounted for more than half of all U.S. deaths in August and in September — the first time that has happened in consecutive months.

Dubya's daddy problem will be the true lasting legacy of his reign. Junior's obsession with Saddam trumped everything else about his administration, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. It's difficult to recall the faux-outrage over Saddam's "rape rooms" after Abu Ghraib and especially now that the proportion of all military deaths experienced by the Guard and Reserves has more than quintupled in just two years.

Repeat after the president: "We're making progress."

{ 8:28 AM }

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