Some Required Reading:

From Chaplain (Lieutenant) Daniel Mode in Afghanistan.... Hat Tip Blackfive
....I was going to write about a peaceful and"do nothing" Fourth of July, but it was anything but peaceful. The story that I am going to tell and "not tell" is a most powerful example of what celebrating our Independence Day is all about. I say "and not tell" because the account involves a lot of sensitive material that is not for public knowledge. The storyof my Fourth starts with a song I learned long ago, back in second grade, that has always stuck with me and which had been playing in my mind as I came to celebrate the holiday this year. The song begins:"Freedom is not free. You have to pay a price you have to sacrifice for your liberty."
Read more Don't forget to read parts II and III.

~And more....From Lt. Currie in Iraq. (Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum)
I don't know much, I haven't been alive long enough to be wise. I have seen more of the world than most, but am not worldly. What I do know it this. Chamberlain was right (more than one hundred years ago, near Gettysburg, we are fighting a new kind of war, with a new Army. We are fighting for an ideal. Freedom, such an intangible notion, such a simple thing, such a complex thing. We can quantify the price in blood, we can quantify the price in dollars. What is so simple here in B'dad, is so lost on so much of America... Freedom. Read More

~And some more from another Trooper with him in the same location. (Thunder 6)
This morning the sun bled into the sky in slow motion, the acetylene light scattering off the broad sheet of dust that shrouds the Baghdad skyline. As the sun clawed ever higher the gathering rays started to knife through the dirty haze, the light slowly shifting through the spectrum. And then it broke through its dirty chains, flaring in a brilliant second sunrise. The light show almost took my mind off the upcoming mission. Almost. The mission wasn’t anything special, just a jog to the IZ to pick up some supplies. But the everyday missions can be every bit as lethal as a combat patrol, so when I arrived at the motorpool the vehicles were already abuzz with troops performing pre mission checks on their armored HMMWVs. Read More

End.