The family refused to speak to the reporters, but after discovering why there was such interest in their loss, Donica emailed a simple statement to news agencies: "Dustin had a tremendous sense of duty, both to his family, and his country.

He will be missed by his family, and all those that knew him."

For the loved ones of the 22year old from Spring, near Houston, it was an individual tragedy. For the rest of the US, it was a grim statistic: Donica, killed three days after Christmas during counter-insurgency operations in Baghdad, was just one of 115 who died during the bloodiest month for US troops in Iraq in more than two years. And the carnage has continued into this year, with the death total now at 3,006. Even at the most conservative estimate, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since 2003, along with 250 other coalition troops, 127 of them British.

All the indications are that, if President George Bush gets his way and up to 30,000 more US troops are dispatched to Iraq, the rate of losses would accelerate yet further. The extra forces would be deployed to Baghdad and Anbar province, where the Sunni insurgency is at its hottest, mainly to carry out anti-insurgency operations of the kind in which Donica was killed. Scepticism about this strategy is widespread, not only among US military commanders in Iraq, but, according to some reports, even in the White House itself.

Bush is pressing ahead regardless. Last week, he reshuffled his senior military chiefs, with General George Casey, the most senior officer in Iraq and a noted doubter of the efficacy of any "surge" in troops, leaving his post several months early.