"The innocent always pay the bill." - U.S. Army Warrant Officer John Jewell (this week as he left Iraq)

Finally... today... the last of the U.S. troops rolled out of Iraq and across the border into Kuwait ending a senseless war that cost 4,500 American lives, 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 BILLION from the United States treasury... In my view, it never should have started in the first place. We were attacked on 9-11 by Osama bin Laden and Al Quaeda. Yes, we did have what we now know as inaccurate intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, so Bush did decide to go in and finish his father's Gulf War with Saddam Hussein. But for 9 years with what goal? At first, the liberals said we were fighting for oil, but we have come away with none of that. We were the aggressor trying to get our piece of land in the Mideast? That didn't happen. No, we are leaving the Iraqi's vunerable to groups like the Muslim brotherhood coming in and taking over the predominantly Muslim country. Why can't we learn that democracy doesn't work in countries like that??!! It takes an educated country to vote. And it takes a Judeo-Christian faith to maintain fairness to laws that our faith sets up on the Bible's Ten Commandments. Nothing else works. The Muslims have Sharia law which is in direct contradiction to our laws because it is set up on their faith. The faith of a country does matter.

Lives were lost in every town in Texas and every town all over the United States; heroes, fighting for our freedom. I love every single one of them, and I am thankful that these men and women volunteer to put themselves in harm's way to this end.

The dirty little secret - the elephant in the room - is that most conservatives in this country agree with me that the war should be over. You don't hear much fanfare today in spite of this huge red letter day. AND, where are the anti-war liberals dancing the streets?? Oh, that's right. They are occupying Wall Street right now. They've moved on to fighting a new war over here. In the past year I've asked almost every person I know whether we should still be in Iraq, and most people just shook their heads and said probably not. We became calloused to hearing the casualties. Big Media stopped sending journalists over to Iraq to get photo opps in the tanks. Everyone just lost interest. It went on too long. And there was no easy way to end it and still leave the Iraqi's in a good position. I hate to say it, but it reminds me a lot of Vietnam - another senseless war where victory could not be declared.

In spite of it all, I want to extend a personal thank you to all members of the U.S. military for fighting for my freedom.

I love you from the bottom of my heart...