A soccer-loving college dropout from Texas with a weakness for trance music and ham-and-pineapple pizza has become the 3,000th American soldier killed in Iraq.

Dustin Donica, 22, an army specialist from the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was killed by small-arms fire on Thursday during a counter-insurgency operations in Karmah in the Sunni stronghold of al-Anbar province.

His father, David, learnt that his son’s death was the 3,000th by logging on to the internet after reporters began calling at his home.

“We had no idea why we were getting, within an hour, almost eight or nine people at the door,” he said. “That was a surprise to us because none of them mentioned why they were there. Perhaps they were embarrassed. One guy was standing there shaking like a leaf.”

Specialist Donica, known as “DD” to his friends, was brought up in the town of Spring on the outskirts of Houston. He enlisted after a short spell at the University of Texas in Austin.

On his MySpace page he wrote that he wanted to die “young”. But he also said that he hoped to go back to college and that his greatest fear was “the slight chance of re-enlistment seeming smart”. Asked: “What do you want to be when you Grow Up?”, he wrote: “if i knew, i wouldn’t be here.”

President Bush, who has spent the week at his ranch in Texas devising a new Iraq policy, consulting Tony Blair by telephone, refused to issue a statement on the death.

Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, said that Mr Bush “grieves for each one that is lost” and “will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain”.

The latest fatality fuelled Democratic anger at the prospect of a troop “surge” in Iraq. Many Republican legislators are concerned that it could cost them the 2008 presidential election — and their own seats.

Robert Novak, a well-connected conservative columnist, estimated yesterday that Mr Bush would struggle to muster support from more than 12 of the 49 Republican senators for the extra 30,000 troops now thought to be under consideration.

Senator Chuck Hagel, the second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the plan was “Alice in Wonderland”.

He added: “I’m absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly.”

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