On Tuesday, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a military spokesman in Iraq, wrote in an e-mail to reporters, “The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives.”

But on Wednesday, the Times ran a front-page story marking the 2,000th fatality — plus four pages of photos of the dead inside. The gallery covered every death since the paper last performed this service, at the 1,000 mark in early September 2004.

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