So the moment has arrived after days of speculation and drum beating on both sides of the political spectrum. Based on the amount of spin the last couple of days, I am sure this is going to get major media play. 2,000th American Dead in Iraq! But when it all comes down to it, that will simply be simplifying an issue that most Americans simply don't want to deal with... The question of whether invading Iraq was worth even ONE American life?

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military has announced the death of an American soldier who was wounded in Iraq.

That brings the U.S. death toll to 2,000.

The toll compiled by The Associated Press reached 2,000 with the death of an Army sergeant who was wounded by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad. He died last weekend in Texas.

Staff Sgt. George Alexander of Killeen, Texas, was wounded last week in Samarra, north of Baghdad. He was based at Fort Benning in Georgia.

Earlier Tuesday, President George W. Bush warned the nation to brace for an even higher casualty count, saying there's more work ahead in Iraq before the job is done.

But the first U.S. service member to die in the Iraq war is just as important as the 2,000th. A U.S. military spokesman said that is why the military does not consider the death of the 2,000th American in Iraq a milestone.

And the chief spokesman for the American-led coalition force is asking reporters not to treat it as a milestone, either.

The military earlier Tuesday announced the deaths of two Marines killed last week in Baghdad. Their deaths raised to 1,999 the number of members of the U.S. military killed since the Iraq war started in March of 2003. This latest death makes the toll hit 2,000.

But in an e-mail, military spokesman Steve Boylan spoke of what he calls the "daily milestones" in the war against terrorism, which he said are rarely covered. Those include the struggles faced by families of soldiers serving for a year or more. and the Iraqis who've fought along with U.S. forces, making themselves daily targets for militant attacks.

As for the 2,000 death, Boylan calls that an "artificial mark on the wall."

I have mixed emotions about the numbers game. I would tend to agree that the first soldier killed is just as important as the 2,000th. I would also tend to agree that it is but one statistic among many sad statistics of this war. Discounting the thousands of Iraqi's dead, or the victims of terrorist atrocities in Iraq since the war started is a slap in the face of those sacrifices.

Nor is it possible to look at the state of the war in Iraq today and to imagine 2,000 being anywhere near the finaly death tally for American troops. We are a society obsessed with numbers and no doubt when the number of U.S. killed surpasses that of those who died on 9/11, there will be other comparisons.