THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. My name is Joe Biden, I’m Jill Biden’s husband. (Laughter.) And it’s a delight to be here with all of you.
Secretary Shinseki, Becky Blank, who is the acting Commerce Secretary, all — we have Seth Harris here, who is the acting Labor Secretary. And, Admiral, good to see you, man. Look at all the brass here. There’s no reason why we all shouldn’t be here.
Look, folks, the truth of the matter is that we’re delighted to welcome you to the White House, but all the business leaders, military leaders, it’s great to have you here — and veterans.
But the truth is we all should be here. We all should be in this spot at this time because there’s so much work to do. My colleagues are tired of hearing me say over the last 20 years, we only have one truly sacred obligation in this country. We have a lot of obligations — to our children, to the elderly, to the poor. But there’s only truly sacred obligation in my view, and that's to equip those we send to war and care for those who come home from war and their families. That's a sacred obligation.
This post-9/11 generation — and I see some folks out there — well, no one is quite my age. (Laughter.) But I see folks out there from the Vietnam generation on, and before. All made incredible contributions, but this 9/11 generation has been astounding. Over 3.4 million young women and men have joined our military since 9/11, with almost the certain knowledge that they're likely to be deployed overseas. 1.7 million of those brave women and men have walked across those scorching sands of Iraq or those barren mountains in Afghanistan. And many of them, as all of you know — and some of you are among them, including some of the brass here — didn't just serve once or twice. Some have served three and four and five deployments. Pretty incredible.
Every day I get a card, and on my schedule card I have them listed on the back — and, thanks to the Pentagon, we call every day. I want to know exactly how many lives have been lost and exactly how many people — how many of our brave soldiers, Marines, Guardsmen, et cetera, how many have been wounded. As of today, 6,564 have died in those conflicts; 50,651 have been wounded. And like all of you, I count the one.
I know how we would have felt if, God forbid, something happened to our son when he was there a year and someone said, by the way, there are around 6,000 who have died, or there are about 65,000 who have been wounded. Every single one of these women and men have families, have a
Source: White House Press Office
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