Look how far we've come...

When I made these mittens last March, I knit the current number of American casualties in Iraq on the day I made the first mitten. As of March 23, 2005, 1524 soldiers had died. By the time I began the second mitten, on March 31, 2005, the number had jumped to 1533.
When I made these mittens, I didn't know if we were at the beginning, middle, or end the war. I had the idea that the number might look either very small or sadly large.
A year and a half later, 2578 American military men and women have died in Iraq. 2807 soldiers in the "coalition" in total have died.
(The number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed is still a mystery. There was a study by British Medical Journal The Lancet reporting that over 100,000 civilians had been killed. That particular study was made public in late 2004.)
It's morose to wear mittens emblazoned with these statistics. But recognizing realities is necessary if we expect the world to change.

I'm posting the pattern for the mittens here.

Current American and Coalition (of the willing) casuality numbers can be found on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website.