Amarillo College Ranger

Issue date: 3/8/07 Section: Religion & Politics

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As the global war on terror continues, so do the controversies surrounding the issue.

When we sent our troops to Iraq in 2003, we never could have imagined the circumstances that would surface over the next four years.

According to www.whitehouse.gov, we have achieved many of our original objectives in Iraq since the war began.

"Saddam Hussein's regime is no longer an organized threat to Iraq, its neighbors or the United States, Iraq is governed by a freely elected government under a permanent constitution, Democratic institutions have been established and are enabling Iraqis to shape their own state and per capita incomes have increased and Iraq has performed under its IMF agreement," the Web site reported.

At the time the decision was made to go to war, President Bush had a lot of support from the rest of the government. Then, when we were actually in Iraq for about a year, people began to grow impatient.

Maybe the war turned out to be more than we thought it would be, but the fact remains that we went there to do a job, and we cannot pull out until that job is complete.

Pressures for an exit strategy continually have been placed on Bush, but he stands strong in the fact that he cannot put the war in Iraq on a timetable, insisting that we will leave when our mission is complete.

Things aren't exactly peachy in Iraq, but look at all we have accomplished since we've been there.

For one, Saddam Hussein was taken out of power and now has been executed for the years he spent committing crimes against humanity. And let's not forget when more than 186,000 Iraqis cast ballots in the country's January 2005 election.

Glenn Beck put together a video titled, "Iraq: The Real Story," that pointed out more of the good things that are happening in Iraq.

The media usually fails to mention that 98 percent of the children have been vaccinated against polio and other diseases or that 4,500 schools have been rebuilt and restocked with more than 8 million textbooks.

Nineteen thousand new members were added to the Iraqi special police force as well as 18,000 new border agents.

Thirty-three thousand new businesses have started up, and there are more than five million users of cell phones in Iraq, something that was virtually unheard of during Hussein's regime. Even more amazing, though, is the fact that 25 percent of Iraq's parliament is made up of women, the highest proportion in the Arab world.

Freedom of speech no longer is a fantasy to Iraqis. More than 150 newspapers and TV shows discuss political events freely.

In Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, he laid out his new strategy for Iraq. He humbly admitted that some of the former strategies haven't been working.

Bush proposed sending more troops to Iraq so we can complete the job we went there to do faster. He acknowledged that more blood would be shed as a result but stressed that this is a war we must win.

I believe Americans should support this war, our troops and the commander-in-chief until the job is done. War is terrible, but it is nonetheless necessary at times.

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