[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 21385]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE WORST CASUALTY OF WAR

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, just about sunrise in the desert of 
the sun and the valley of the gun, the last American troops left Iraq. 
It was this past Sunday, December 18, 2011. It has been 8 years, 7 
months, and 24 days since the war began. The Americans are coming home 
by Christmas. Mission accomplished.
  4,474 Americans gave their lives, and thousands of others were 
wounded. The last American casualty was Army Specialist David Emanuel 
Hickman from North Carolina, killed on November 14. These Americans 
died in a land they had never been for a people they had never known.
  The Americans have liberated Iraq from a dictatorship. To apply Ben 
Franklin's statement on the founding of America: We have given the 
Iraqis a free country; let's see if they can keep it or not.
  The choice and responsibility for Iraq is now with Iraq, but we here 
in America shall remember those who served and returned, those who 
served and did not return, and those who served and returned with the 
wounds of war. As one wounded trooper said yesterday: ``The worst 
casualty of war is to be forgotten.''
  And that's just the way it is.

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