"No matter how sincere an apology is, when said over and over, it’s easy to become desensitized to words," Sergeant/E-5 Jason Miles of East Palo Alto, Calif. said.

Miles, now 23, graduated from Basic Training on Jan. 31, 2004, and was in Iraq by March of that same year.

"I always considered myself a disciplined individual. But I did learn a thing or two about accountability, however," he said.

As a private, he was responsible for "thousands of dollars of equipment at all times" while he was deployed. As an infantry team leader, he became responsible for the equipment of his soldiers as well, "which included weapons, night vision optics, ammunition, sensitive information, maps and plans, radio frequencies etc," he said.

"Out of all the material things that I was accountable for, I never forgot that at the end of the day, I had to be accountable for my personal actions and my ethics. And the parents, brothers, sisters and wives held me accountable for the lives of loved ones."

Patrolling Iraqi streets

Miles and other soldiers were assigned to raid Iraqi homes in an effort apprehend suspected bomb makers in the sleeping hours of morning.

"Between the crying of the wives and yelling from the suspected (and sometimes confirmed) bomb makers, you could never look at a weeping child and really convey a sense of apology," he said.

Besides the language barrier, Miles confronted "a very real human factor. The children couldn’t comprehend that their fathers were bad guys. All they could understand was that people who didn’t look, dress, or pray like them were taking their dads away," he said.

Even though he believed that his actions were justified -- "to ensure the immediate and future safety of the soldiers and other Iraqis -- no amount of sincerity could compensate a child for such a loss," he said.

"1,197,469 is a rough daily update based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count," according to Just Foreign Policy, an independent and non-partisan mass membership organization.

“A total of 1,082 Iraqis, including 925 non-combatant civilians, were killed, up from 721 in February,” the BBC says.

"And civilian deaths in Baghdad are rising, from 172 in February to 211 in March," according to statistics compiled by McClatchy. So far in April, 58 Iraqis have been killed in the capital.

These figures contradict claims by Baghdad government and the US that overall levels of violence had been reduced by last year’s US troop surge.

On Tuesday, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the U.S. envoy to Iraq, testified before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees "that civilian casualties had fallen, al-Qaida was weakened, the Iraqi army was stronger and more than 91,000 Iraqi citizens were armed and working with the U.S., mostly in Iraq's Sunni communities," McClatchy says.

Halt in troop withdrawals

Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org, says there are 160,000 troops serving in combat in Iraq right now.

"If you’re a soldier in today’s army, you’re either in Iraq, just coming home, or getting ready to go," Soltz told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC's Countdown.

"Five combat surge brigades are scheduled to leave Badhdad by the end of July, leaving 15 brigades, or roughly 140,000 troops, in Iraq," McClatchy says. "Seven months after telling Congress that he would offer a plan for reducing the troop presence, Gen. Petraeus now recommends a halt in troop withdrawals after roughly 30,000 'surge' troops leave this summer, followed by at least 45 days to consider any further pullbacks."

Dana J. Tuszke of BlogHer.com says that news of her younger sister's deployment to Iraq in February 2009 has kept her awake at night. Her sister, Rachel, is the same age as Sergeant Jason Miles, 23. Miles has already completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I keep thinking of the hundreds of thousands of men and women currently serving in the military, stationed thousands of miles from their homes, away from their families," Tuszke said. "I worry about the many more who will be sent over to Iraq and Afghanistan to serve 12 and 15 month terms."

Sponsor a soldier, adopt a platoon

1. Support a soldier: AnySoldier.com, a family-based organization and 501(c)(3), has served over one million troops in just four years.

2. AdoptaPlatoon.org: Founded in 1998, this nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization is "managed nationwide by volunteer mothers to ensure that deployed United States Service members in all branches of the military are not forgotten. To provide a better deployment quality of life, lift morale, and assist military families, the AAP created projects that meet the need of military requests, established special projects for holidays, and assigns individual morale lifting mail support to service members of all branches of the U.S. military serving their Nation around the world."

3. Add your name: A large number of signatures on petitions is a compelling way to keep pressure on Congress as there are more votes on the war.

4. Write a letter to the Editor: Letters are one of the most frequently-read sections of a newspaper. Just Foreign Policy's tool makes it easy to craft one.