[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9236-9237]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               2,000 DEATHS IN OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Woolsey) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, while the House was out of session last 
week, the Nation suffered its 2,000th fatality in the conflict known as 
Operation Enduring Freedom, the overwhelming number of those deaths 
coming in Afghanistan. For more than 10 years now,

[[Page 9237]]

we've been losing young, courageous servicemembers on a mission that 
isn't bolstering our national security, isn't supported by the American 
people, but is costing us billions of dollars every month. What a 
disaster and what a tragedy.
  Mr. Speaker, from this Chamber, I regularly hear Members of the 
majority invoking morality in support of efforts to cut effective 
programs that help the most vulnerable members of our society. So where 
is their moral outrage and where is their budget axe when it comes to 
the most expensive government program imaginable that has killed 2,000 
of our troops?
  Two of those 2,000 come from my part of the country, the Sixth 
Congressional District of California. Army Specialist Christopher 
Gathercole and Army Sergeant Ryan Connolly, both of Santa Rosa, 
California, were killed less than a month apart in the year 2008.
  We had others who were killed during the nearly 9 years that our 
troops were in Iraq, but 2,000 deaths doesn't even begin to tell the 
story of the human cost of this war. More than 15,000 Americans have 
come home wounded, many in ways that will alter their lives forever. 
Even those who returned with their bodies intact often suffer from 
devastating posttraumatic stress that may never go away. Postdeployment 
suicide has reached epidemic levels.
  Nearly 2.5 million men and women have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, 
and I actually can't say that I trust that the veterans health care 
system is prepared or will be prepared to deal with the huge demand 
that will be placed on the services in the coming years.
  A recent report prepared by VA doctors outlines the unique and varied 
health care needs of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. In 
addition to traumatic brain injuries, depression, and substance abuse, 
there's chronic muscle pain, sleep disturbances, hypertension, and 
complications from environmental exposures. Many of our returning 
heroes have difficulty readjusting to civilian life, integrating once 
again into their families, their workplaces, and their communities.
  We had better be willing as a Nation to write that check for their 
care as we were for the war that damaged them in the first place.
  And it's critical, Mr. Speaker, that we remember the human cost is 
not just here in the United States. Two thousand Americans have died in 
nearly 11 years of war. Well, 3,000 Afghan civilians, many of them 
children, were killed last year alone for the cause of their so-called 
liberation.
  It's not enough to acknowledge the casualties of this war, to 
memorialize the dead and pay tribute to their service. What we need is 
an immediate change of policy. To extend the war through 2014 is to 
sentence hundreds more servicemembers to their deaths, all for a policy 
that isn't achieving its stated objectives while strengthening the very 
terrorists and extremists that we're trying to defeat.
  There's only one solution, Mr. Speaker. There's only one choice that 
will finally keep the death toll from climbing. That choice is bring 
our troops home. Bring them home now.

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