U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan marked two important, but divergent, milestones in the month of August, showing increased stability and success in the former and ongoing turbulence in the latter.
For the first time since the beginning of the Iraq War, Americans forces sustained no troop deaths in Iraq, the Associated Press reports. AP checked records for combat and non-combat related deaths and found no fatalities of either kind.
In Afghanistan, tragically, August proved the deadliest month since the invasion for American forces, according to another Associated Press story:
The 66 U.S. service members killed this month eclipses the previous record of 65 killed in July 2010, according to an Associated Press tally. Nearly half the August deaths occurred when insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter Aug. 6, killing 30 American troops, mostly elite Navy SEALs.
