Now can we get back to what most Americans consider the most important issue facing the country–the war and the killing in Iraq? Sure, the president’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence was, and is, a good and important story. And it was fun to poke fun at puppeteer Dick Cheney’s effort to declare himself the fourth and most independent branch of government. And there was mild interest in Russian President Putin’s visit to Kennebunkport.

But during that period the second quarter of the year came to an end. And far outside the Beltway, along with the stock market and corporate earnings, 331 Americans died in Iraq, more than in any previous quarter. And although there was anger in the White House press room toward the temerity of the Libby commutation, and ridicule of Cheney’s chutzpah, in all the briefings and press gaggles during that period, no one asked, or seemed to care about the incessant drumbeat of death in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, where I thought we had won.

There was a good chance to ask about the death toll when National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, one of Libby’s buddies, briefed reporters on what to expect (very little) from the Putin visit. But no one asked.

I have been cautioned that it does little good to ask about the death toll in Iraq because the answers come back in bland talking points. But that may be because the questions are not as angry, frustrated or pointed as they have been on the Libby and Cheney matters. My friend and former White House colleague Helen Thomas, who sets the eyes of somnambulent reporters rolling toward the ceiling, always asks the loaded, pointed question. For as she says, and I learned, it’s the question that’s important.

A dinner guest, a veteran of the federal government, told me the other night. “Keep asking about the deaths, the wounded and why the president has not been able to attend a single military funeral.” Indeed, when the questions are pointed and persistent and as angry as those seen in the Libby affair, it has an effect. Members of the White House staff monitor the briefings and can be forced to react. White House reporters may check each morning at the icasualties.org Web site to find the latest number of U.S. dead and wounded. So far this month, by July 4, there had been 10 American deaths, bringing the total to 3,588.

I believe that reporters need to remind the White House spokesperson ever day what the death toll is and ask pointedly whether he or she knows the number and can say if the president knows, or cares enough to attend at least one funeral and personally present the bereaved with the coffin flag “with the thanks of a grateful nation.” But George w. Bush, as E.L. Doctorow said two years ago in the East Hampton Star, is an “unfeeling president,” someone Doctorow faults “for not knowing what death is.”