From my perspective, however, we're already losing them. The real impact of the Army's policy on Reserve deployments won't be felt until long after his watch. But because everything bad that happens is the commander's fault, Mr. Rumsfeld's tenure may be remembered less for its battlefield victories than for the damage it caused to the morale of the Army.

The thing is, our soldiers understand this will be a slow process, that it could take years. I spoke with a returning soldier last Sunday morning, my husband and I met him at the McDonalds in our area. I shook his hand and told him we appreciated the sacrifices and service they were doing to keep us safe.

He was really nice, and as we spoke he said that the stay in Iraq was probably going to be 'years'. My husband said that the Iraqi's didn't even have a word for 'democracy', that is was a foriegn concept that they had never experienced. The soldier agreed, and said that the young people will be the ones who achieve democracy, that the older generation would not. He said they would have to be educated in every aspect of democrary and learn to love it before we would be able to leave.

For those democrats who keep looking at their watch and asking when this will be over, they need to rethink their position. The longer we keep the terrorists and the olagarchy that feeds their hate at bay and away from our land the safer we'll be.

Just my two cents.

As always, it's the boots on the ground that suffer when the egos of their leaders run afoul of reality.

Despite all their rhetoric about their critics, it would seem that those in the Bush Administration are the ones guilty of failing to support our troops."