We know it's true, reluctantly. What the television news analyst said this week: "Now that the death toll of American troops in Iraq is approaching 4,000, the public's attention may be focused more on the war during this stage of the presidential election." Good grief. In other words, a nice round number will get our attention and maybe we'll all start thinking about this a little more.

Yes, we do tend to sit up and take notice most when the numbers are clear, and the cable TV folks have a figure on which to hang a new story. Maybe that's human nature. But it's also a little too simple, because the war is ever-present on some level. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has been a staunch defender of this latest Bush war strategy, the "surge," and he's not promising any rapid withdrawals from Iraq should he win the White House. Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are promising quite the opposite -- plans to get out, timetables. The people have been paying attention.

Perhaps the ultimate verdict from the people won't come until November, but President Bush's war in Iraq is getting harder and harder to defend, from the faulty reasons for going in to the rationalizations of bad decisions along the way to the very definition of victory. If we win, what have we won? That's what people started asking as Vietnam continued and continued and continued. Now many are asking it about Iraq.

It's hard to put the politics aside, and given the declining state of the Bush economy and the fears in the hearts of many about their families' security, maybe it's understandable why Iraq might go to the back mental burners for many except when a numerical benchmark comes up.

But give or take a day on that analyst's comment, a much better reason to "focus" came home here in North Carolina. The N&O reported Saturday morning the deaths of two soldiers with ties to this state. One of them was Staff Sgt. Laurent J. West, 32 years old, who was in Iraq after being stationed at Fort Bragg. The other was Juantrea T. Bradley, 28 years old, of Greenville. West died when the vehicle he was in was hit by an improvised explosive device (IEDs, they're called) on March 11. Bradley, assigned to a unit from Fort Eustis, Va., was killed after the vehicle he was in was hit by indirect fire.

Very brave men they were, the both of them. Both had been awarded the Purple Heart. Both had served overseas before.

I had a friend who, though her personal view of this war was that it has been a profoundly tragic mistake, would see men such as these in restaurants and would, without telling them, buy their lunches. Another friend has his own custom. When he sees soldiers in uniform, he asks them if they've been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and so far all of them have been. "Thank you for what you do," he says. And when he asks them if others have expressed their appreciation, the response is always, "Almost everybody says that, sir. And we appreciate it."

Whether it is the passing of a benchmark in terms of casualties, or the deaths of a couple of young lads connected to us in some way, it's good never to let thoughts stray from the profound sacrifice that we are asking of the individual young men and women who, in the prime of their lives, are giving of their best years in service in faraway, frightening places.

They face the dangers every day at sunrise and all the way through until sunset and all the time in between -- no relief.

They carry on despite the heartache of being far from home and away from their mothers and fathers and their wives and husbands and children.

They are able to focus on the task at hand, a violent task at hand for most of them, despite carrying with them the worries they feel for all those folks back home who are suffering crises and traumas all their own. That's right. Those in the military have the same burdens the rest of us have, in addition to everything else.

And they see their friends, comrades in arms who shared laughter and pictures and stories with them, die on the battlefield.

It may be that men such as Bradley and West were aware of this war's unpopularity back home. Perhaps they heard some of the debates.

But for them, and for those nearly 4,000 other people who have perished, however, it was all about honorable duty and serving their country. This they did, and that is what mattered.

Something else matters, too.

West left behind his wife and two stepdaughters. Bradley's wife survives him, and their four children.