You're certainly not alone here on this Meek. While the AP reporter couldn't count beyond 3,000 it appears he did do a better job than we usually get. He even managed to get most of my quote generally correct but did leave out the important part about Viet Nam and not happening again.
The part he left out of my quote was that we must not let the leftist liberal and biased media to turn public opinion against the troops and this effort at eradicating terrorism like they did in the Nam towards us VN vets.