Thursday, May 15, 2008

More dead than space at Bragg

The hot topics may be whether and when Hillary Clinton will halt her campign for the Democratic nomination for president and this week’s NASCAR race in Charlotte, but there’s a war going on, too. An Associated Press report provides a stark reminder of how deadly it is for North Carolina soldiers:

"When the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division dedicated its own memorial to paratroopers killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, three sides of the wide
granite column were blank. Three years later, there is no more room. The last name belongs to Sgt. Clayton G. Dunn, killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in May 2007. Since then, roughly 50 more names have been etched onto a granite wall that now stands behind the original column - each a grim reminder that the 13-ton granite tower wasn’t big enough to honor all those who have fallen and continue to fall."

The United States has lost more than 4,000 soldiers in Iraq and 800 in Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001. The 82nd lost 62 paratroopers in 2007, more than in any other year since the wars began. Three separate incidents in Iraq last year each claimed the lives of seven or more paratroopers from the 82nd.
Here’s the question: Has the war accomplished enough to justify these losses, so close to home for North Carolinians?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

shouldnt Charlotte think about making crime checks in apartments a mandate law? If anyone lives near an apartment they should be worried about what I am going to say. For the last four years apartments in North Carolina have not been taking crime checks in many of their apartments; There is no law stating they have to take criminal checks in N.C. People contact your Representative and ask them to support a bill on crime checks for all apartments . Thank You

Anonymous said...

What's that comment got to do with the war ? Anyway, just goes to show you how much fun Bushie Pyle is having with his little Army men quadrupling the prices of oil and gas. I don't mean it's their fault; they are only doing what that blithering idiot is telling them to do. I believe he will kill 4,800 more of these men and women for absolutely nothing except enriching Halliburton and his friends at Chevron. (And Exxon, and Shell, and BP, and Sunoco, and any other oil company that has greased his palms.