5 Years

March 20, 2003.
At this point I was still in middle school, 8th grade to be exact. Near the end of 3rd quarter if I remember correctly. I was also 14 years old, a minor. At that age, we still don't really understand the concept of the world working as a whole. All that we knew at that point was people we knew were going to be sent overseas for work...

April 17, 2008. (5 years and 28 days later)
At this point I am a freshman in college, ending my first semester. I'm 19 years old, an adult by American standards. But now I understand more about how the world works. That we share it and it must be unified in some ways. But I still don't understand why we (as Americans) think we are the higher power. Makes no sense. 5 years ago we went into Iraq and made the decision that we were going to "liberate" those people. 5 years ago. This was supposed to be an in and out job. 5 years. A whole different set of soldiers are over there than the ones who were there in the beginning. I see no point for us to have such a presence over there anymore. No matter when we pull out, there is going to be conflict. The bad groups of people will just keep holding off until we go...maybe in another 5 years...but the second we're gone, they will try and regain their power. So we should start to just pull out.

5 years
4,038 American Casualties
21 people missing or captured
29,628 people wounded
112 journalists dead
40 media support workers dead
500 US troops had ambutations (toes and fingers don't count)