"One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic": The New/Old Math via the Bush White House??

Stalin is responsible for the above quote, but I wonder how far society has developed from the middle decades of the 20th century, when tens of millions of soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in one way or another by the fascism of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union's twisted version of "communism".

United States military deaths suffered in the invasion of Iraq, through 5/18/06, are 2,454, with no end in sight. How many months (years?) will it be before the U.S. population stops seeing each American soldier's KIA announcement as a horrific waste of life and begins the process of hardening itself to the fact that, as Donald Rumsfeld has said, "death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war"? How long before we as a nation become almost completely immune (or "depressed", which requires a general apathy and lack of appropriate feelings and emotions in its victim) to our losses and to Iraq's, and instead turn our attention away whenever possible or convenient?

One hopeful quote comes from our own President In Chief, Mr. Bush: "Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear." Since our President seems to lack the irony gene, maybe someone someday will explain to him how these simple words give many people in the U.S. hope that our country will be restored to sanity as quickly as possible.