Those who support the war in Iraq — and their numbers continue to dwindle — sometimes use a worn-out metaphor to justify the cost of war.

"You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet," they tell me. By "eggs," of course, they mean the men and women in the U.S. military who have died in Iraq.

The first time I heard this trope was in the weeks leading up to the U.S. invasion, which I opposed. I've heard it many times since, but it never loses its sting, this suggestion that some human lives are expendable ingredients in a recipe for disaster. Every time, I try to imagine how it would feel if someone I love were dismissed as easily discarded. And every time, I quickly try to move on.

The more distance we wedge between ourselves and the war the easier it is to pretend it's someone else's sacrifice to bear. I am as guilty as the next. For all my hand-wringing over this war, I am not forced to worry for even a moment that a member of my family could die there. That makes every minute of my every day far different from those who do.

In late April, I wrote a column about a soldier's funeral in Cincinnati. In response, a reader suggested that I visit the Web site of the Department of Defense and sign up for e-mail alerts that would let me know whenever another American has died in this war. It struck me as a way to force myself to think about what I want to forget most of the time. What I had not anticipated is how it would feel to be on the receiving end of this news over and over.

Most of the time, I carry a BlackBerry with me. Any e-mail sent to me at The Plain Dealer or to my personal account automatically forwards to this hand-held bad habit, which vibrates with each new message. On May 1, I was wrapping up a happy evening at a local library event when my BlackBerry buzzed. Heading for my car, I pulled it out and read the subject line of the latest e-mail: "DOD Identifies Marine Casualty."

I clicked "open" and read that 22-year-old Sgt. Merlin German of New York had died April 11 at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio from wounds he suffered in combat nearly two years earlier.

The next day, I looked up this young man's name on the Internet and found an obituary on Newsday.com that began with this:

"More than a year after Sgt. Merlin German nearly died in a roadside bombing in Iraq, his hands burned into nubs and his body in a wheelchair, he resolved to walk into his San Antonio church on his own two feet."

German had endured more than 100 surgeries but died after an attempt to graft skin to his lip. He was described as "a guiding light" to fellow service members in the burn unit where he had stayed for 17 months.

Later that evening, another DOD alert: Army Staff Sgt. Bryan E. Bolander, from Bakersfield, Calif., died April 29 in Baghdad when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device. He was 26. I looked him up, too. He planned to marry Sandra Beth Comer on June 7.

Since May 1, 24 DOD alerts have informed me that yet another American has died from injuries in Iraq, and 24 times I made myself stop whatever I was doing and read aloud the person's name and hometown. Last Wednesday, I was standing in the shoe aisle of a discount store when I learned that Army Spc. Justin L. Buxbaum died in Kushamond, Afghanistan. The DOD said his death was from a "non-combat related incident" and is under investigation. What it didn't say was that this was his third tour of duty.

That same week, the story broke that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan insists in his new book that the Iraq war was a "serious strategic blunder" and that the Bush administration chose "to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed."

Immediately, one denial after another poured forth from former and current administration officials. Some of them suggested that the former Bush loyalist just wasn't in his right mind anymore.

In the parlance of egg metaphors, I'd call that scrambling.

To visit the Department of Defense Web site, go to www.defenselink.mil.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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