By host Tom Ashbrook:

Two thousand dead American troops in Iraq. We all saw it coming, with an awful and certain inevitability.

The media saw it coming, and laid its plans. The White House saw it coming, and had President Bush out this week, talking up the war. The 140,000 troops in Iraq saw it coming - but of course, for them, individually, death is out there every day, lurking as they do their jobs.

At home, life goes on. We work and play and catch the news: “2000 dead in Iraq.” But the weight of that number falls, one death, one loss, at a time on families far from Balad and Ramadi and Baghdad.

Hear a conversation with the families of some of the 2000 soldiers in Iraq, and its meaning at home.

Guests:

Roseanne Umana, Clinical Psychologist with the Columbus Vets Center in Columbus, Ohio.

Janey Harrah, Grottose, VA.

John Witmer, New Berlin, Wisconsin.

Dante
Zappala, Philadelphia, PA.

Diane Ibbotson, Albion, Illinois.

John Ellsworth, Wixom, Michigan.

Diane Davis Santoriello, Pen Hills, Pennsylvania.