What America will leave behind in Iraq, at least in broad terms, is still unknown, but Iraqis already are living with what's sure to remain the war's most personal vestige: the absence of the dead. Almost no Iraqi has escaped that trauma.
No comprehensive, reliable civilian body count exists, but so many people have been killed in the past six years that it's nearly impossible to find an Iraqi who doesn't know someone who died violently, either because of actions by American troops or, far more commonly, in the widespread bloodletting that the invasion triggered.
In Iraq, 'Everybody knows somebody killed by the war'
