Green Mountain boys

The Vermont National Guard begins shipping out tomorrow for Bush’s Obama’s war in Afghanistan.

A farewell ceremony is set for this morning in Burlington for the first of nearly 1,500 Vermont National Guard soldiers going to Afghanistan as part of the Guard’s largest deployment since World War II.

As a sign of how long this war has lasted, 60 percent of those being deployed are veterans of earlier deployments to the region.

Although figures are hard to come by, the Seattle Times reports

The wars have taken a big toll on the state [of Vermont], which has lost 22 people in Iraq and has the highest per-capita casualty rate among states, at 3.54 per 100,000 of population.

As of 8 January 2005, Vermont had the highest number of deaths per 100K of population of any state in the union. It was 1.64—compared to a national average of 0.47.

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