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A look at the 4,000

One in six were too young to buy a beer. About two dozen were old enough for an AARP card. Eleven died on Thanksgiving Day, 11 on Christmas, and at least five on their birthdays. One percent were named Smith.

The number of deaths — 3,992 as of Friday, not including 482 troops killed in Afghanistan and elsewhere — are small by the standards of modern warfare.

The total is less than two-thirds of the U.S. fatalities during the World War II battle of Iwo Jima, which lasted about a month; less than U.S. losses on each of the first three days of the Battle of the Bulge; and less than one-quarter of U.S. fatalities in Vietnam in 1968 alone.

Is the upcoming 4,000th death more notable than the 3,999th or 4,001st?

“Four thousand is a good round number people can grab hold of,” said Morten Ender, a U.S. Military Academy sociologist who studies the military. “It reminds us of what’s going on with a war that, since the surge, seems to have lost its place in the public mind.”

Whether anyone pays attention to the benchmark is something else.

“People tend not to be numerologists,” said John Mueller, an Ohio State University expert on war and public opinion. “These milestones basically have little effect on public support for a war. It’s not like the stock market; people are more affected by events in wars than numbers.”

James Carafano, a military analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, agrees to some extent.

“Americans are not casualty averse. They are failure averse,” Carafano said. “They were unhappy with the lack of progress and spiraling violence. That is why you have seen public support rebound after it was clear the surge was working.

“In war and everything else, Americans get energized when they are touched in a personal way,” he continued. “In most wars, not just Iraq, that does not happen.”

A 2006 Duke University study found that it was 100 times more likely that an American knew one of the 292,000 Americans killed in World War II than someone today would know a service member slain in Iraq.

“It’s still a war that hasn’t involved a draft or an increase in taxes,” said Jon Alterman, who heads the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This is a war that most Americans continue to feel they don’t have to make sacrifices for.”

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said during a recent speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York that the situation for U.S. troops in Iraq is “infinitely better” now than during 2006, when Americans were losing the equivalent of a battalion — about 600 to 1,000 troops — a month to deaths and injuries.

But McCaffrey said the U.S. military is being drained of its energy and morale because of the slow pace of training that will allow more Iraqi soldiers to take over the fight. American soldiers, he said, are “becoming increasingly unsure about the position they’ve been placed in.”

By the numbers

USA Today and The Associated Press both analyzed who gave their lives, where they came from and how they fell. According to their numbers:

* Ninety-eight percent were male (compared with 99.9 percent of those lost in Vietnam). Ninety-eight female troops have died in Iraq, according to the Associated Press.

* Seventy-five percent were non-Hispanic white (compared with 86 percent in Vietnam); 11 percent were Hispanic; 9 percent were black; 2 percent were Asian.

* The most common age was 21 (20 in Vietnam). Eighty-three of the dead were older than 45. Thirty-three were 18.

* Army: 72 percent; Marines: 24 percent; Navy: 2 percent; Air Force: 1 percent. The Coast Guard had one death.

* Eighty-three percent of the dead were active duty; 10 percent National Guard; 6 percent Reserve.

* Nine percent were officers, including 24 lieutenant colonels and six colonels.

* More of the fallen were based at Fort Hood, Texas, than at any other military installation.

* California suffered more losses than any other home state (429); Texas had 370; New York, 173. Wyoming had the fewest (12). Thirty-three were from Puerto Rico.

* New York City, which has lost 62 residents, had more deaths than any other hometown.

* Percent from the South (region according to U.S. Census Bureau): 36 percent

* Percent from the Northeast: (region according to U.S. Census Bureau): 15 percent

* More than half of the nearly 4,000 (52 percent) were killed by bombs, 16 percent by enemy gunfire. Five percent died in aircraft crashes. Fifty-five people drowned, and 15 were electrocuted. Eighteen percent died from what the military terms “nonhostile” causes, including 66 troops from illness.

* Percentage who died since President Bush declared major combat operations ended: 97 percent

* Since the war began in March 2003, the Pentagon has reported double-digit U.S. fatalities on 35 days. The bloodiest was Jan. 26, 2005, when a Marine helicopter crashed in a sandstorm, killing all 31 aboard, and six other service members died in combat. The bloodiest month was November 2004, when 137 died; the least bloody was February 2004, when 21 were lost. On 460 days of the war, no service member died.

Rick Hampson and Paul Overberg of USA Today, and Bradley Brooks and Monika Mathur of The Associated Press contributed to this report.