BBC NEWS | Middle East | US casualties in Iraq rise to 500 This is misleading. The number lost in combat is about two-thirds of that (346 to be exact), as detailed here and here. This is nine months after an invasion that liberated 25 million people. There are no historical comparisons for this (beyond Afghanistan, which did not involve a comparable deployment of US ground troops.) All previous invasions would have come at the cost of tens of thousands of deaths, not hundreds. It is as if, instead of running a mile in just under four minutes, someone were to do it in about 12 seconds.