Nine marines died in Fallujah over the weekend. Their names have not yet been released but the names of the US forces who have previously died in Iraq are available. The roll call has its own momentum.

October 28: Sergeant Michael Battles Snr, 38, died when a bomb detonated near his checkpoint in Baghdad.

October 27: Staff Sergeant Jerome Lemon, 42, died when an improvised explosive detonated near his vehicle in Balad.

October 24: Marine Richard Slocum, 19, died in a motor vehicle accident near Abu Ghraib.

And so it goes, week after week, month after month, because President George Bush wanted to avenge his father, George Bush snr, whose failure to finish off the mocking, bellicose Saddam Hussein cost him the presidency. That sits at the core of the "war on terrorism".

To settle this family debt, vast amounts of American power, credibility, blood and money have been squandered. Eleven hundred American military personnel are dead and 8000 have been wounded or injured since Bush the younger let loose the dogs of war in Iraq on March 19 last year.

More than 90 per cent of these casualties have occurred since May 1 last year, the day a giant "Mission Accomplished" sign was placed behind Bush during a photo opportunity aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, sailing off the coast of California.

One of history's more disquieting chapters will be written tomorrow, November 2, election day in the United States, if the man who avoided combat during the Vietnam war, George Bush, defeats the man who served with courage in Vietnam, Senator John Kerry.

Kerry served and Bush deferred. Kerry was wounded in combat, Bush ambled through the Air Force reserves and has dissembled about it ever since. Yet it is Kerry who has been attacked and hunted for his military service. He has no case to answer.

It is Bush, not Kerry, who assiduously positioned the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, for political advantage. It is Bush, not Kerry, who has been a strategic liability for the US.

Before this President committed the US to invading Iraq, America had the moral authority bequeathed by the dead of September 11. On Bush's bold initiative, it had routed the Taliban in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was in retreat, the international community was supportive, and the difficult rehabilitation of Afghanistan had begun. The US military cast an unassailable image of being able to deploy immense firepower into any theatre. Saddam's psychotic regime had been locked down. America's intelligence resources were concentrated on the threat posed by Islamic terrorism.

Today, none of this applies. Huge resources of manpower, money, prestige, credibility and intelligence has been re-routed to the Texas grudge in Iraq. Iran brazenly marches towards acquiring nuclear weapons. Israel continues to receive a blank cheque from Washington as it devolves into an apartheid state. Yet Bush is running for re-election on the strength of his record as the leader of the war on terrorism, even as he weakens that war effort with the enormous diversion in Iraq.

Bush talks about patriotism while patriots die, day after day.

October 16: Captain Christopher Johnson, 29, and Chief Warrant Officer William Brennan, 36, killed in Baghdad when two helicopters collided.

October 15: Specialist Alan Burgess, 24, died when a bomb detonated near his patrol vehicle; Marine Brian Schramm, 22, killed by enemy action in Babil province; Marine William Salazar, 26, killed by enemy action in Al Anbar province; Sergeant Michael Owen, 31, and Specialist Jonathan Santos, 22, were killed when a bomb detonated near their vehicle at Karabilah.

And so it goes. Imagine the impact on each family. Then take this casualty list and multiply it tenfold, and you have the Iraqi list. Credible estimates of civilian dead have been about 10,000, but last week the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a survey estimating that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died as a result of the US-led invasion.

This is a highly contentious claim for such a prestigious journal to publish, but one thing is certain: many more civilians than combatants have been killed by the unintended consequences of this invasion. And Kerry, whatever his limitations as a presidential aspirant, is, unlike Bush, fully schooled in the moral ambiguities of war. The historian Douglas Brinkley's book, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, contains extensive excerpts from Kerry's diaries and letters from the war, which chart his journey from military officer to anti-war activist, a journey built on incidents like this:

"For the first time I realised that they were planning to take the old man in with them to act as a human mine detector ... [Later] I noticed that the prisoner wasn't with them and the Green Beret winked at me when I asked and said that he had tried to escape. With a smile on his face they boarded the boats and we left the area ... I found out that he had been knifed by one of the Nungs [mercenary] and then sliced up and left with a note of warning to the VC."

Kerry opposed the Vietnam War but never took the morally vacuous position of being "anti-war". He knew that at some point every society has had to pick up the gun and defend itself, or others, from tyranny.

Since Friday, when Osama bin Laden injected himself into the US presidential campaign via a mocking video message, Kerry and Bush have competed with each other in their condemnations of America's new Hitler figure. Kerry even accused Bush of failing to deploy US special forces to liquidate bin Laden when he had retreated to the mountains of Tora Bora. It is a hard, low blow, but Kerry won the Democratic nomination because he is a hard campaigner, he has gravitas, and his military service stands in such unflattering contrast to that of the president.

Kerry's evolution was clarified by intense moments such as this, in 1969, during a firefight in Vietnam: "I was amazed by how detached I was from the whole scene. I just lay in a ditch, not firing because I wanted to save ammo and because I couldn't see what I was firing at. I thought about what was happening in New York at that very moment and if people really felt that I was doing something worthwhile while they went down to Schrafft's and had another ice-cream sundae ..."

Kerry was back in his hometown of Boston on Saturday when more than 3 million people had taken to the streets to celebrate. It had nothing to do with Kerry. It was all about the Boston Red Sox. They had won baseball's World Series, ending an 86-year drought that had become known as the Curse.

Maybe it was an omen. Maybe a mirage. But only one candidate for US president has laid contemplating in a ditch under intense enemy fire. Only one candidate came to public office as a warrior scarred and cautioned by war. The other came to office as a moral tourist.

© 2004 The Sydney Morning Herald