OH MY GOD, SOMEONE SAID "THANKS"!

Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers were treated to a grand 4th of July celebration by grateful Kurds at a spectacular lakeside resort near Dokan, a town in the semiautonomous Kurdish north of the country. Kurds also celebrate July 4 as the anniversary of the establishment in 1992 of a Kurdish government, thanks in part to a U.S.-British enforced no-fly zone that kept Saddam Hussein's forces out of the north.

Barham Salih, a leader of the eastern half of the Kurdish enclave, thanked U.S. troops for ousting Saddam.

"What you have done is immense," he said. "You have come from afar and delivered our people from injustice. You came to liberate our people. Mission accomplished."

As well they should.

Read the whole thing here.