Afghanistan: More Dead Californians, More Amputees and Nearly Enough Dough to Buy Norway
One of the most telling signs of a war with no clear end in sight is that deaths have been rising nearly every year since the conflict in Afghanistan started.
(Click the image to go to the interactive visualization)
At 119, more soldiers from California have died in Afghanistan than from any other state.
However, California and Texas both have comparable numbers of wounded Afghanistan veterans, over 600 each. A recent Pentagon report said IEDs are now the "the most serious threat" to coalition forces. The bombs have caused the number of amputations among coalition forces to increase 60 percent over the last year.
And finally, costs for the war in Afghanistan continue to increase. Not counting expenditures in Iraq, or even spending on "unallocated expenses" or "enhanced security" measures, the Congressional Research Service puts the current total at around $455 billion dollars. That's the annual GDP of Norway, and nearly enough to pay for a four-year in-state college degree for every child in America.
(Relative costs of Afghanistan war, in billions of dollars, from the Congressional Research Service in June 2010).
(Map and all casualties and fatalities data from iCasualties.org. College data from CollegeBoard.com and from the US Census Bureau.)
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