In Iraq, the U.S. military death toll has now topped * 1,000. All but 140 of the deaths have come since May 1, 2003, when President George Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq to be over. Bush spoke on that day under a banner that read * “Mission Accomplished.” Yesterday Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the invasion and said that the people of Iraq were “better off today than they were a year ago, in every conceivable respect.”