The Cost in American Lives

Summary 1

• We should never have gone to war in Iraq
• We have wasted $400 billion fighting it
• We have wasted 3,000 American lives

Summary 1

• Americans are frustrated
• We have wasted precious American lives

"We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and has seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."

"Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be ... We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives."

February 10, 2007
Ames, IA
Iowa State University Press Conference

February 28, 2007
New York, NY
David Letterman Show Appearance

Summary 2

• I apologize for what I said yesterday
• I do not mean to demean our troops

Summary 2

• My choice of words was poor
• "Sacrifice is the word I should have used
• We owe our troops a debt of gratitude

"Even as I said it, I realized I had misspoken. It is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any (military families) felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown."

"Last evening, I referred to American casualties in Iraq as wasted. I should have used the word, sacrificed, as I have in the past. No one appreciates and honors more than I do the selfless patriotism of American servicemen and women in the Iraq War. We owe them a debt we can never fully repay. And America’s leaders owe them, as well as the American people, our best judgment and honest appraisal of the progress of the war, in which they continue to sacrifice."

February 12, 2007
Nashua, NH
To reporters during campaign appearance

March 1, 2007
Written statement issued to reporters