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You all know by now that next week both General Petraeus and our Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, will be testifying before Congress about the Iraq war. of course, the testimony will be the same old song and dance that we have all grown accustomed to hearing from the Bush mouthpieces. Both of these people will simply be telling the Congress that we will have the same continuation in Iraq that we have thus far had, with 140,000 troops to stay in place indefinitely, which we already knew in the first place.
The Cost to Our Troops
· Since the start of the war in Iraq, 4,003 brave American men and women in uniform have been killed. [Defense Department, 3/31/08]
· An estimated 29,496 servicemembers have been wounded in Iraq and, as of March 1, more than 31,300 have been treated for non-combat injuries and illness. [Defense Department, 3/31/08, AP, 3/8/08]
· Nearly 1.7 million U.S. troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since September 2001 – more than 592,000 have been deployed more than once. [Department of Defense, 1/31/08]
· According to a report by the Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team, soldiers who are on their second, third and fourth deployments report “low morale, more mental health problems, and more stress-related work problems.” [3/6/08]
· An estimated three-quarter of a million troops have been discharged since the war in Iraq began – many of whom with compromised mental and physical health. An estimated 260,000 have been treated at veterans’ health facilities, nearly 100,000 have been diagnosed as having mental health conditions, and an additional 200,000 have received some level of care from walk-in facilities. [Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, Excerpt:“The Three Trillion Dollar War,” 2008]
The price is way to high to continue this sham!
