Off to the studio in just a moment to appear on Greta van Susteren’s show, where I intend to say just what I thought of the President’s speech (maybe it’s living out here in California, a couple of thousand miles from the panicky eastern corridor, that does it, but I thought Bush spoke calmly and well). First, though, a report on my casualty bleg of this afternoon:

1. I misstated the number of casualties so far in Iraq. The American dead we’ve suffered since the war began 14 months ago numbers not under 600 hundred but just over 800 (as of today, 801).

2. The number of dead we suffered in Vietnam peaked in 1968 at 538 in September and then the same number again in November. (For details, click here: http://members.aol.com/forcountry/kiamonth.htm).

3. The number of American dead on the Normandy beaches of D-Day is unclear—the official figures combine several kinds of casualties (dead, wounded and missing) and several forces (Americans, British, and Canadians)—but a reasonable estimate, several readers suggested, would put the figure at about 1500. A still more arresting statistic: During the Second World War the United States suffered an average of 400 dead every day for a thousand days.

4. A reader offered these striking casualty figures from the Civil War: At the 1862 Battle of Antietam, 23,000 fell, killed or wounded, in a single day, while at the Battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia, 7,000 Union soldiers fell in 20 minutes.

Thanks to the more than 70 readers who replied to my bleg. Whatever the panic the press may be voicing, the readers of this Corner have convinced me, our casualties in Iraq have by any historical standard been not alarmingly heavy but remarkably light.