Monday, May 30, 2016

Bet You Didn't Know This About Our Fighting Soldiers

In Barack Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention — the speech that catapulted him onto the national stage — the bright-eyed, loose-limbed senator from Illinois spoke of America's responsibility to its soldiers.
   
"We have a solemn obligation," Obama said, "not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war and secure the peace."
In that spirit, here are some of those numbers.
—2,499 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq so far under President Obama, according to the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
—Of those, 1,906 have been killed in and around Afghanistan, and 593 in Iraq.
—Under Obama, the United States has been at war for 2,687 days. That's longer than under George W. Bush — or any other U.S. president, for that matter.


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/some-2-500-americans-have-died-in-afghanistan-and-iraq-under-obama-20160530#ixzz4A9pKZUFs

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