By this point, you might be wondering, and possibly feeling guilty about wondering, why Brannan doesn’t just get divorced. 

This is an ethical/moral claim. The author’s intent with this sentence was to initiate the intrigue in the reader’s mind, and lead them to question why Brannan would contradict her previous experiences. 

And she would tell you openly that she’s thought about it. “Everyone has thought about it,” she says. 

She is stating these things as fact. Though they may NOT be factual statements, they are factual claims. 

And a lot of Kateri’s eight-year-old son now counts the exits in new spaces he enters, and points them out to his loved ones until war or fire fails to break out, and everyone is safely back home. 

This claim is not exactly fleshed out enough to fall into one of the exact categories, but I would place it, at present, as a causal claim, as I believe the intent was to attribute/claim this behavior is a result of the learned behaviors from their upbringing. 

In the wake of Vietnam, 38 percent of marriages failed within the first six months of a veteran’s return stateside; the divorce rate was twice as high for vets with PTSD as for those without. Vietnam vets with severe PTSD are 69 percent more likely to have their marriages fail than other vets. 

These are numerical/factual claims. Each one employs a statistic to state a fact regarding Vietnam veterans and failed marriages as a means of perpetuating the primary point. 

Army records also show that 65 percent of active-duty suicides, which now outpace combat deaths, are precipitated by broken relationships. And veterans, well, one of them dies by suicide every 80 minutes. 

This is a numerical/factual/ATTRIBUTIVE claim. While it does fall into the first two categories, it is most clearly an attributive claim. It does not list a specific source for the data, but instead broadly quotes “Army records.” Which army records? They can’t exactly verify the claim, but name-dropping army records should be good enough, right? 

But even ignoring that though vets make up 7 percent of the United States, they account for 20 percent of its suicides —or that children and teenagers of a parent who’s committed suicide are three times more likely to kill themselves, too—or a whole bunch of equally grim statistics, Brannan’s got her reasons for sticking it out with Caleb.

This is a numerical/factual/MORAL claim. While the first half of the claim lists statistics, it uses them to contradict the actual claim being made. The direction it takes is an emotional one; one that frames Brannan as an “against all odds” sort of hero. 

“I love him,” she says.

This is a factual claim. Regardless of the truth behind her words, she is stating this as a fact, so it should be treated as so (unless it can be disproven later).

Brannan fully supports any wife—who feels that she or her children are in danger, or in an untenable mental-health environment, or for whatever reason—who decides to leave. She’s here, through Family of a Vet, to help those people. But she’s also there for those FOV users who, like her, have decided to stay. 

This is an evaluative claim. This claim is judging/evaluating the specific attributes of each marital situation in order to develop the suitability and value of FOV for them. 

“I have enormous respect for Caleb,” she explains if you ask her why. “He has never stopped fighting for this family. Now, we’ve had little breaks from therapy, but he never stopped going to therapy. I love him,” she repeats, defensively at times. He is her friend, and her first love, and her rock, and her lifeline, her blossoming young daughter’s father, her ally, and her hero, she tells Caleb when he asks. Because the person who most often asks Brannan why she stays with her husband is her husband.

These are factual and moral claims. While each one is written as indisputable fact, it is important to also assess the moral implications of each of them, and the emotional attachment involved that is providing a trigger to say these things. Are they true? Perhaps. But they are amplified by the emotional/moral aspect of the shared relationship.