NEW POLL: ONLY 28 PERCENT OF AMERICANS KNOW ALMOST 4,000 AMERICANS HAVE DIED IN THE IRAQ WAR

THREE MORE U.S. SOLDIERS KILLED IN IRAQ

It is shocking but not surprising considering how the mainstream media has "spiked" any stories about the Iraq war.

The Pew Research Center study shows only 28 percent of those polled could correctly answer about 4,000 U.S. troops have died in the Iraq war. That is down from last August when 54 percent gave the accurate casualty figure, which was about 3,5000 dead at that time.

Exit polls of voters in presidential primaries and many national surveys have shown the economy has displaced the war in recent weeks as the public choice as the nation's top problem.Iraq was the most avidly followed news story for most of the first half of 2007, but it has not been the most closely watched story in any week since mid-October, according to a Pew survey of people's interest in the news.

The portion of news stories on the war has dropped in recent months as well, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan group that evaluates news coverage.

Which begs the question. Will the mainstream media cover the gathering of hundreds of Iraq War Veterans Against the War beginning Thursday on Capital Hill in Washington?

There is one news outlet which will snub the event, and if they do cover any portion of the testimony of Iraq War veterans about atrocities they have seen it will be a snipped squeezed in between endless political coverage and more on New York Governor Elliot Spitzer's resignation over charges he was involved with prostitutes.

That news outlet is FOX NEWS which has always treated the Iraq war as a sidebar story.

While the interest in the Iraq war wanes with Americans, the death of Americans in Iraq doesn't take a holiday.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq on Wednesday, bringing to 12 the number of Americans who have been killed in Iraq over the past three days.

With the overall U.S. military death toll in Iraq nearing 4,000, the latest killings mark a significant rise in deadly attacks against Americans.

At least 3,987 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count. The figure includes eight military civilians.

Navy Lt. Patrick Evans, a military spokesman, told The Associated Press that three soldiers were killed Wednesday in a rocket attack on Combat Outpost Adder near Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. Two other soldiers were wounded.

The attack came a day after an American soldier died when a roadside bomb hit his patrol near Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.

Eight soldiers were killed in a pair of bomb attacks on Monday, the heaviest single day of U.S. casualties since September.

Three of those soldiers died in a roadside bombing in Diyala, a violent province where al-Qaida in Iraq has been active.

The five others were killed while on foot patrol in central Baghdad. A suicide bomber approached them and detonated his explosives vest. The Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni militant group, issued a statement Wednesday claiming responsibility for the soldiers' deaths. Three Americans and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded.

AP story carried by Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq;_ylt=Am2Jn4xmTEjs7DijFy7Hi_ZX6GMA