INDIANAPOLIS | War has a way of turning human beings into numbers before the public ever has time to understand them as names. Officials count the dead. Briefings count the wounded. Maps count bases, ports, routes, ships, aircraft and strategic chokepoints. Markets count barrels of oil and percentage moves. Politicians count leverage. But veterans know the truth that gets buried beneath all of that language. The price of war is not paid in talking points. It is paid in blood.
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