The Washington Post reported this week that a cache of materials about the war in Afghanistan revealed that the US mission there was failing spectacularly, leading to increasing service member and contractor deaths — not to mention tens of thousands of civilian casualties over the past two decades.
The internal documents obtained by the Washington Post have increased scrutiny of one of the most solemn ways the war is felt — the body count. Over 2,300 US troops have died during the course of the war, along with 1,145 NATO and coalition troops. Presently, there are about 13,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
Those tolls are likely exceeded, however, by that of the US contractors who quietly performed some of the war's most dangerous functions — and whose deaths the Pentagon has never felt obligated to report to Americans.