Feb 09 2007
Obama says number of war wounded understated
From the Minneapolis - St. Paul Star Tribune: Veterans, Obama say number of war wounded grossly understated
Veterans groups and Sen. Barack Obama say government officials are obscuring the actual number of wounded in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by leaving out of some public documents troops who suffer non-combat injuries.
…the number of wounded in the wars often circulated publicly is around 23,000.
That number only accounts for those wounded in combat. When troops from those wars who were wounded in other ways are counted, the number more than doubles, to about 53,000.
“It doesn’t make a difference whether you were hit by enemy fire, or injured because your vehicle crashed, or got sick because of serving in a war zone,” Obama said in a statement. “The effects on the soldiers and their families are the same. And the impact in terms of the current fighting force and future demands on the VA are also the same.”
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