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US toll passes 1,000 deaths in Afghanistan war in grim milestone
By ROBERT H. REID (AP) –
KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military death toll in Afghanistan surpassed 1,000 at a time when President Barack Obama’s strategy to turn back the Taliban is facing its greatest test — an ambitious campaign to win over a disgruntled population in the insurgents’ southern heartland.
More casualties are expected when the campaign kicks into high gear this summer. The results may determine the outcome of a nearly nine-year conflict that became “Obama’s war” after he decided to shift the fight against Islamist militancy from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Afghan insurgents find sanctuary.
The grim milestone was reached when NATO reported that a service member was killed Friday in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan. The statement did not identify the victim or give the nationality. U.S. spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the service member was American — the 32nd U.S. war death this month by an Associated Press count.
Already the new focus on the once-forgotten Afghan war has come at a heavy price. More than 430 of the U.S. dead were killed after Obama took office in January 2009.
The list of American service members killed in combat in Afghanistan begins with Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman of San Antonio, Texas, a 31-year-old career Special forces soldier ambushed on Jan. 4, 2002, after attending a meeting with Afghan leaders in Khost province. He left a wife and two children. The base where a suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees last December bears his name.
For many of the more than 94,000 U.S. service members in Afghanistan, the 1,000-mark passed without fanfare.
Capt. Nick Ziemba of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, serving with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment in southern Afghanistan, said 1,000 was an arbitrary number and would have no impact on troop morale or operations.
“We’re going to continue to work,” he said.
The AP bases its tally on Defense Department reports of deaths suffered as a direct result of the Afghan conflict, including personnel assigned to units in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Uzbekistan. Other news organizations count deaths suffered by service members assigned elsewhere as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes operations in the Philippines, the Horn of Africa and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The grim milestone comes midway between the president’s decision last December to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and a gut check on the war’s progress that he has promised by the end of the year.
After a long and wrenching conflict in Iraq — which has claimed nearly 4,400 American military lives — Obama has promised not to be backed into an open-ended war in Afghanistan. He has insisted that some U.S. troops will come home beginning in July 2011.
That has not been enough to satisfy his anti-war supporters. At the same time, mid-2011 may be too soon to turn the tide.
As casualties rise, the slide in overall support for the war may accelerate.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=33285
Posted by Yanira Farray on May 28 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under AfPak, WarZone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Peter, one thing that caught my eye was that the VA stopped your medical care. It seems beyond belief to me considering your disability and compared to the care I get at the VA in New Haven. I’m very sorry to hear that. You live in what’s got to be one of the most beautiful towns and areas in this country, and I hope that’s some solace. I’ve been looking on the Internet at real estate up there with the idea of moving up there, and if I make it some day, I’d look forward to meeting you. It’d help us readers if you included some specifics about the harassment you’re getting from that judge and Rep. Shea-Porter.
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We too often are alarmed at death tolls but the real toll are those injured or disabled for life,unable to keep their families or earn a decent living.Making profit from the pain,misery and deaths of others,has to be the lowest form of human endeavour,and they partly justified it by this Global Warming science.There are too many humans on the planet and waging they war,were doing the ecology a favour.Notice that not too many of them are putting up their hands for the global cull.They have their nuke shelters ready for the big event.
On a brighter note ,Alan Hart a renouned British Journalist has now come out backing Alan Sabrovski’s assertion that the Zionists were the chief protagonists in the 911 coup. http:/noliesradio.org/archives/16749 He says there is a real threat of Israel using a nuclear weapon against the USA as another false flag event to get the US to attack Iran and they would be free to finish off the Palistinians.
Let’s hope there aren’t too many full moons,since the lunatics are definitely in charge of the nukes.
Memorial Day has been perverted and bastardized, turned into a long weekend that celebrates Americans god given right to BBQ, drink beer, raise hell, get drunk and cry pseudo-tears when you hear some BS artist like Turdy Keith singing about kicking Muslim ass.
If we truly loved and supported our troops, we’d bring them home from the ‘Wars for Wall Street and Israel’ and then set about downsizing the Pentagon, with some of that money directed back to the VA.
How many watch some NASCAR circus instead of going to the local veterans cemetary and saying “Thanks?”
It seems, the “Friends of Israel” government in London has shown more wisdom and clarity of the situation on ground in Afghanistan. In order to stop more dead bodies arriving in Britain and further national bankruptcy – David Cameron and his Jewish coalition has decided to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan with “honor” of course.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/british-to-withdraw-from-afghanistan/
Good work, Michael, to remind the Americans as what for their sons and daughters have been/are being ‘used’ by the Zionists in US Administration. The ‘balloon’ of 9/11, war-on-terror’ has already been burst/exposed for which US administration sent its forces to Afghanistan and the Zionists are trying desperately to cover it up, proof: No Report given by the 9/11 Investigation Committee as yet.
That is exactly what happened in Iraq. Will you please let American know about the numbers of the sons and daughters ‘used’(killed) on a fake/false ‘Report’ about the presence of WMDs in Iraq. The ‘report’ was made by Zionists in CIA about which G.W Bush had confessed, in his last months, that it was NOT verified and yet he ordered for an attack on Iraq killing innocent Iraqi civilians and the US army men.
What for..? Can anyone in the whole of US tell that vicious US attack on Iraq, to find WMDs on an unverified ‘Report’, was justified…..? Nobody can, I challenge. But Bush did it because the Zionist Jews/Christians and AIPAC wanted so as none of their sons/daughters or grand sons/daughters were there, in the US army, to be killed. They ‘save’ themselves and their sons/daughters and call it the “co-incidences”. The owner of Twin Towers, Larry Silverstein, had an ‘appointment’ with the doctor and his son and daughter got ‘late’ to reach on the job, on 9/11. They got saved all the Jews who used to work in Twin Tower offices, except the unfortunate five, as they had been informed through SMSs NOT to go on the jobs. these Jewish Zionists did not bother if rest of the Americans die or are burned alive there.
That is what happened in Iraq and that is what happening in Afghanistan as the very basic motive of Zionists Jews is to denuclearize a Muslim state at any cost, because they know that the ‘cost’ in terms of money and material (the human lives) to be paid by Americans and NOT by Israelis.
Shouldn’t Bush and his accomplices be tried at The Hague…? or someone in US may file a suite against Bush and his accomplices in US court, of war crimes and crime against Humanity. They MUST be.