"STEALING THE HEADLINES"

Or...perhaps, the headlines are being given away.

A very thoughtful piece from a small town paper in Kentucky. Worthy of a read.

Yet, as I thumb through the dozens of photos that froze but one tiny moment of my time in Iraq earlier this year, I am reminded that thin line that divides love and hate is often all that keeps peace from becoming chaos, and chaos from becoming peace.

The chaos that has crept northward from Baghdad into Mosul, a city the size of Chicago controlled by the 101st Airborne Division, has supplanted the relative peace that never quite made headlines. Certainly, Saturday's single-most deadly event of the war is deserving of a nation's attention, but the day-to-day missions of the thousands of men and women of Fort Campbell now in Iraq has not changed since I was able to spend time among them in August.

The highly-trained soldiers of the 101st with their high-tech equipment and skills to employ that machinery have essentially been reduced to police, security guards, city administrators, painters, carpenters, traffic cops, etc. … all in an effort to help the Iraqi people get back on their feet and begin making a new life after Saddam...

Unfortunately, those who never wanted us there in the first place and continue to battle our presence are stealing the headlines over everything good accomplished by coalition forces.

Whether you agree or disagree with our decision to enter Iraq, we are there now, helping a people cope with something they have never before experienced -- freedom.

Ask our soldiers if they want to come home, and they'll say, "Yes."

Ask them if their purpose has been accomplished and they will most likely say, "No."

If America had turned tail and retreated with every tragic loss of life, every heart-breaking casualty and each daunting task that lay ahead, our stature in the world would be little more than existent.