FROM THE ARCHIVES

One Year Ago — September 1, 2010

Taliban Slaughter in Afghanistan

Video

Deadly month for Americans in Afghanistan (NBC Nightly News, Aug. 30, 2010) — NBC’s Tom Aspell reports. (01:15)

One year ago today, I reported that a spike in bloodshed in Afghanistan claimed the lives of 19 U.S. service members in just four days, elevating the U.S. death toll for August 2010 to 55, with a total of 76 fatalities for NATO forces.

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Two Years Ago — September 1, 2009

Iraq-Afghanistan Casualties

Men walk past burnt vehicles along Chaman’s Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Monday, Aug. 31, 2009. Suspected Taliban militants set fire to 18 container trucks carrying supplies for Western forces in neighboring Afghanistan. (Photo credit: Saeed Achakzai / Reuters)

Two years ago today, on September 1, 2009, I provided my weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan and reported that with 52 U.S. troops killed, August 2009 became the deadliest month of the deadliest year yet in the Afghanistan war; that the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan called for a new strategy against the Taliban in an assessment of the 8-year-old conflict ordered by the U.S. Secretary of Defense; and that the number of civilians killed in Iraq shot up to 393 in August 2009, the highest level since April 2009, after a spate of mass-casualty bombings caused carnage in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

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Three Years Ago — September 1, 2008

Campaign Against Michele Bachmann: Day 49

Patrick (2) fishing from a constituent’s dock during a campaign swing to Little Rock Lake in Benton County.

Three years ago today, on September 1, 2008 — the 49th day of my 2008 campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District — I visited the St. Stephen Parish Festival and traveled to rural Rice an update on shoreline restoration and water quality issues on Little Rock Lake in Benton County.