Iraq death toll reaches 4,000

By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The number of U.S. soldiers to die in Iraq has reached 4,000, the U.S. military said on Monday, just days after the fifth anniversary of a war that President George W. Bush says the United States is on track to win.

The U.S. military said in a statement four soldiers were killed late on Sunday when a roadside bomb, the biggest killer of American soldiers in Iraq, exploded near their vehicle in southern Baghdad. One soldier was wounded in the attack.

What impact the grim milestone will have on a war-weary American public and the U.S. presidential campaign will be hard to assess in the short term, but war critics are likely to seize on it to boost their case for U.S. troops to be withdrawn.

The U.S. military dismisses such tolls as arbitrary markers.

"It is artificial in the sense that somehow the 4,000th tragic loss somehow will be different from the first," U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith told Reuters in an interview last week.

Anthony Cordesman, a respected Iraq analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the 4,000 death could trigger another wave of polarized debate.

"Those who oppose the war will see it as further reason to end it. Those who support it, will point to military progress and say that future casualties will be much lower," he said.

Although Americans are more preoccupied with domestic economic troubles, the Iraq war is still an important issue in the presidential campaign, with Democratic hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama calling for a timetable for withdrawal.