KABUL, Afghanistan - The American military death toll in Afghanistan reached 1,000 yesterday as President Obama's strategy to turn back the Taliban is facing its greatest test - an ambitious campaign to win over a disgruntled population in the insurgents' southern heartland.
More casualties are expected when the campaign kicks into high gear this summer.
The results may determine the outcome of a nearly nine-year conflict that became "Obama's war" after he shifted the fight from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Afghan insurgents find sanctuary.
The grim milestone was reached in a roadside bombing just before the Memorial Day weekend.
The NATO statement did not identify the victim or give the nationality of the service member killed yesterday in southern Afghanistan.
U.S. Col. Wayne Shanks said the soldier was American - the 32nd U.S. war death this month by an Associated Press count.
The new focus on the Afghan war has occurred at a heavy price.
More than 430 of the U.S. dead were killed after Mr. Obama took office in January, 2009.
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has now surpassed the total in Iraq - roughly 94,000 in Afghanistan compared with 92,000 in Iraq, where the war is winding down.
For many of the U.S. service members in Afghanistan, the 1,000 mark passed without commemoration.
Capt. Nick Ziemba of Wilbraham, Mass., serving with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment in southern Afghanistan, said 1,000 was an arbitrary number and would have no impact on troop morale or operations.
"We're going to continue to work," Captain Ziemba said.
The AP bases its tally on Defense Department reports of deaths suffered as a direct result of the Afghan conflict, including personnel assigned to units in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Uzbekistan.
At least 675 troops from allied countries have died in the war, according to an AP tally based on announcements of foreign governments.
They include 288 British service members.
Establishing the number of Afghan dead is far more difficult, particularly for the first several years of the war.
The Brookings Institution, using a variety of sources, says at least 6,829 Afghan civilians were killed from 2006 to 2009, and that armed opposition groups such as the Taliban were responsible for about 60 percent of those deaths.
The 1,000th U.S. death comes midway between the President's decision in December to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and an assessment on the war's progress that he has promised by the end of the year.
After a long and wrenching conflict in Iraq - which has claimed nearly 4,400 American military lives - Mr. Obama has promised not to be backed into an open- ended war in Afghanistan.
He has insisted that some U.S. troops will come home beginning in July, 2011.
As casualties rise, the slide in overall support for the war may accelerate.
A majority of Americans - 52 percent - say the war is not worth the cost.
The negative assessment in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll followed a brief rise in support for the war after Mr. Obama refocused the U.S. war plan last year.
Those figures could change dramatically depending on the outcome of the coming operation in Kandahar, the biggest city in the south, with about a half million people, and the Taliban's former spiritual headquarters.
U.S. commanders believe Kandahar is the key to the ethnic Pashtun south, the main theater in the war.
Meanwhile, officials said that after five days of fighting, the Afghan border police, supported by American helicopters, repelled a force of Pakistani Taliban who appeared to have crossed the border to try to carve out a new haven in Afghanistan's Nuristan province.
The fighting ended with two border police officers dead, three wounded, at least three houses burned, and at least 25 Taliban dead, Afghan authorities said.
It doesn't take long when introduced to war at a young age to realize your real duty is to stay alive and make it back home.
The hypocrisy encountered in the military left me with the firm belief that only useless eaters remained after one enlistment.
"Glenn Beck, and his treasonous gabby brethern are cordially invited to smell the methane gas leaking between my butt cheeks while they're kissing my red, white and blue ass !!! ."
It doesn't take long when introduced to war at a young age to realize your real duty is to stay alive and make it back home.
The hypocrisy encountered in the military left me with the firm belief that only useless eaters remained after one enlistment.
For most of us, survival was our only interest.
The military is a class system enforced with prison, a rope or a rifle.
Unfortunately, many men do not realize that the military is a system within a system and they invest too many years to quit, then the system has them to use as they see fit.
I tried to dissuade friends from being lured into staying.