Five hundred seventy-five: That's how many US soldiers have lost their lives in the Afghanistan war since Barack Obama became president at noon on January 20, 2009, according to the icasualties.org web site, which tracks US soldiers' deaths using reports received from the Department of Defense - and which is widely cited in the media as a source of information on US deaths.

According to the same web site, 575 is also the number of US soldiers who lost their lives in the Afghanistan war during the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Therefore, total US deaths in Afghanistan have doubled in Afghanistan under President Obama, and when the next US soldier is reported dead, the majority of US deaths in Afghanistan will have occurred under President Obama.

This grim landmark should be reported in the media, and White House reporters should ask Robert Gibbs to comment on it. It is quite relevant to Gibbs' implicit attempt to marginalize critics of the war in Afghanistan by claiming that they wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than the abolition of the Pentagon. The majority of Americans - including the overwhelming majority of Democrats and at least 60 percent of House Democrats - are deeply skeptical of the administration's Afghanistan policy not because they are knee-jerk pacifists - obviously they are not - but because the human and financial cost of the war is rising, we have nothing to show for the increased cost and the administration has not articulated a clear plan to reach the endgame; indeed, administration officials, led by General Petraeus, have just launched a public relations campaign to undermine the substantial drawdown in troops next summer that Democratic leaders in Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said that they expect.

Two years after an Army specialist saw half his platoon torn apart in Iraq, he hanged himself in a California backyard. In June, the Army and National Guard recorded 32 suicides, the highest number ever in one month. But his death isn't in any military report, because the specialist was a veteran when he took his life.

The nation needs to recognize that veterans aren't included in direct war expenditures either, including our nation's $700 billion defense budget, which already surpasses that of all other countries combined. While it is fiscally impossible to double this year's defense budget, we are incurring a future war debt of that size with little public debate. I refer to our solemn obligation to provide health care and other benefits to the men and women who have served in the military since 2001.

Eye-opening research by Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz puts the lifetime cost of benefits for our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at $663 billion. In fact, a handful of variables could drive these costs up further. When Congress appropriates money for the war, it doesn't include the cost of providing post-military health care and disability payments to the men and women who risk their lives for us. That burden belongs to the Department of Veterans Affairs and its budget, driven by year-to-year needs. I recently voted against the $58 billion supplemental appropriation for the war effort that was approved by the House. These funds will go to war, not to veterans. My vote was in protest of the spiraling costs of the nation's engagement in Afghanistan. Ironically, the additional money for the war is about what the VA will need this year to provide health care to veterans.

I fear we are failing to plan for the future costs and needs of today's military service members. This year the veterans of the six-week Persian Gulf War will receive some $5 billion in disability payments. Our involvement in the region is in its ninth year. I want to be certain that all our veterans will receive the services they deserve this year and 40 years from now.