Lynn C. Woolsey: “While the House was out of session last week, the Nation suffered its 2,000th fatality in the conflict known as…”

“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, 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.…”