This week major news networks, websites and even both The Inlander and The Spokesman-Review are focusing on the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War.

For me the fifth anniversary doesn't carry much weight. I was working the assignment desk at a local TV station when Dan Rather broke into programming to report Tomahawks were dropping all over Baghdad. The troop buildup and UN Security Council meetings had been going on for months, so the first pictures of the fireworks show over downtown Baghdad came as a bit of an anti-climax. Less special effects than Die Hard 4.

The war for me didn't start until a year later. My Iraq War started four years ago April 2nd and ended three years ago March 1st. I went overseas with a platoon of nearly 40 teenagers, fathers, alcoholics, college students, drug users, corrections officers, husbands and carpenters.

I came home with a platoon of weary, tired, frustrated, disillusioned and angry men. More of them were using alcohol and drugs than before we left. One of the men suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI) from a serious vehicle crash where he was ejected from the vehicle. Another one nearly had his left arm amputated from an improvised explosive device while he was a machine gunner on a Humvee.

One came home in a casket draped with an American flag.

Post-traumatic stress disorder and divorce were commonplace among the rank and file of the guys I served with. Some of them have coped well with their return to 'The World' while some not so much. One guy hasn't been seen by anyone since we returned home. It's rumored he's hiding out in his parents' basement at the bottom of a bottle. One guy I got to visit behind a plexiglass window at the Adams County Jail where he was doing a stretch for assault. One guy I got a phone call from at half past midnight when he was standing in a motel parking lot telling me he was waiting for some drugs and he really didn't want to buy the drugs but he couldn't live without them.

Some coped by locking up Iraq in a cardboard box along with their salt-encrusted desert uniforms, photos, combat boots and memories and put them in the back of the closet. Some took the humiliating step of admitting they could no longer suffer in silence and sought out to climb to the summit of red tape in front of the VA Hospital to get treated for psychological wounds that don't rate a Purple Heart yet inflicted nearly as much damage as a gunshot or shrapnel wound.

There are some guys who came home and got married, celebrated the birth of their children or are expecting children. Some went back to their jobs, got new jobs, went back to college and got their degrees.

Regardless of how they live their lives back in 'The World' they are all good men. They may be wearing an orange jumpsuit and matching shackles, shaking from their craving for a Crack fix long overdue, packing up their lives into cardboard boxes because their wives just don't get them anymore, seeing a blurry world with their lips wrapped around the mouth of an upended bottle of Jack Daniels but they are all still good men.

They are good men who stood their ground and fired their weapons as RPG rockets flew at them.

They are good men who kept driving while their buddy lay in the back of the Humvee, his blood splashed all over the inside of the vehicle as the medic frantically tried to save his life.

They are good men who fought back the fear as they put on their war gear, locked and loaded a round into the chamber of their rifle and stepped into their Humvee knowing there might be another IED out there on the patrol route today.

They are good men who lost friends in combat one day and went back out on patrol the next.

They chose to serve in the National Guard. They took an oath, they swore to defend the country. They didn't choose the war. The war chose them. They didn't debate the justifications for the war and then run to Canada like cowards, breaking their contact with the American people to protect them in good times and bad.

My Iraq War wasn't about liberating a country. It wasn't about defending a new regime. It wasn't about enforcing UN sanctions or projecting American military might in the Middle East to protect our strategic national interests in that region. It wasn't about making sure the troops had their earplugs in, Wiley X sunglasses on and that they weren't wearing doo rags and cuffing the sleeves of their blouses so they looked good for the media which occasionally popped their heads out of their Green Zone gopher holes.

When it comes down to remembering the legacy of the Iraq War for me it was all about serving with good men, looking out for the man in front and behind me in the patrol column as we spent a year walking through the tall grass along the banks of the Tigris.