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A portrait of who they were
Between March 20, 2003 and May 6, 2004, 759 US troops died in Iraq. This is the longest, fiercest, sustained combat Americans have seen in a generation.
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Noting that Elvis Presley willingly joined the US Army in 1958 to do his bit - serving with the Third Armored Division in Germany - Moskos asks, "Can you imagine [rap singer] Eminem as a draftee?"
There's another big difference, compared with a generation and a major war ago.
"Women not only are more present, but they're taken seriously by the men and this is a change," says retired US Naval Reserve Capt. John Allen Williams, professor of political science at Loyola University in Chicago.
"There are problems with harassment and assault, but overt sexism is a career-seeking missile, as it needs to be," says Dr. Williams. "It doesn't mean that people agree that women need to be in ground combat - there are reasonable differences about that - but that they can fight and serve honorably, the debate is over about that."
Women make up 13.4 percent of the active duty, National Guard, and Reserve force. Twenty US servicewomen have been killed in Iraq so far (2.5 percent of all US military fatalities), 14 of those due to hostile action.
Of all military men and women killed there, 121 (13 percent) were in Reserve and National Guard units called to active duty.
The demographics of those killed are general. But over the months of the war, wire service reports of their lives and their loss reveal their individual accomplishments and especially their promise. These stories are personal, perhaps suprising in some ways.
When he wasn't flying helicopters, Army Chief Warrant Officer Kyran Kennedy, his wife, Kathy, and their three kids tended an orchard and managed a beekeeping operation in Kentucky. Chief Warrant Officer Kennedy was a talented woodworker who took to Iraq the dulcimer he had made. The music provided a sense of peace in the midst of war, Kathy Kennedy said.
Navy Reserve Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman was fluent in French, Farsi, and Arabic. He had taught history at the US Naval Academy, and he planned to get his doctorate in Turkish studies.
Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez was an orphan from Guatemala who walked part of the way to California, where he lived in a homeless shelter for a time. Joining the military "was a question of honor," a way to pay back his adopted country, said his foster brother Max Gutierrez.
Like several other American servicemen killed in Iraq, Lance Corporal Gutierrez was awarded US citizenship posthumously.
Army Sgt. Felix Delgreco studied Latin for four years in high school. His teacher, Bergouhi Spencer, remembers Sgt. Delgreco as keenly curious and always smiling.
"He was one of those kids you just wanted to bring home and adopt," she says.
Marine Lance Cpl. Gregory MacDonald played classical guitar, studied philosophy as an undergraduate, and had a master's degree from American University. He figured military experience would help a career in Middle Eastern affairs, said his close friend Jeni Spevak.
Like many of those in the National Guard and Reserves, which are likely to make up 40 percent of all US servicemen and women in Iraq over the next year, Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Camara was a first responder - a police officer in New Bedford, Mass.
