Write your local paper about the costs of the Iraq War

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Letter to the Editor

The Letter to the Editor Section is one of the most widely read sections of the newspaper and can reach a large audience. It allows community members to comment on the way issues are being addressed in the media and to influence the topics the local paper may choose to cover. Elected officials often monitor this section of the newspaper and take notice of constituents' opinions.

We've made it easy for you to contact your local newspaper with your views, but editors want to hear from you in your own words.

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Your letter will be most powerful if you keep it short, and use your own words. Once you are finished with your letter, simply click on the 'Send Message' button and your letter will be sent. This will also confirm your TrueMajority membership. Here are some ideas to get you started:

-- Of course, the 4,000 figure totally ignores the at LEAST 80,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (estimates range as high as 600,000).

As bad as 4,000 dead soldiers is, that's not even the whole story. More than 1,000 more men and women working for military contractors in Iraq have also died, although the Defense Department doesn't like to mention them.

If you're only concerned with U.S. casualties, the '4,000 dead' news doesn't consider the incredible number of *wounded* soldiers: 29,320 soldiers wounded in action, and another 20,000 troops who weren't even counted as wounded but now have been found with signs of brain injuries, and yet another 120,000 vets from Iraq and Afghanistan using VA care have potential mental health problems.

Nearly 4,000 American and between 100,000 and 600,000 Iraqi lives later, the direct cost of the Iraq war is approaching $1 trillion and the total cost may well exceed $3 trillion.

¹. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ ['Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey'. By Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham. The Lancet, 29 October 2004.
². 'In outsourced U.S. wars, contractor deaths top 1,000'. By Bernd Debusmann.Reuters. July 3, 2007.
³. http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-11-22-braininjuries_N.htm
⁴. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_conten t_id=1003721852
⁵. http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2008/03/costiraq.html