As governor when I visited our troops in Kuwait and Iraq I served them Thanksgiving dinner. It was a small gesture compared to their sacrifice.

Ceremonies are important. But our gratitude has to be more than visits to the troops and once-a-year Memorial Day ceremonies. We honor the dead best by treating the living well.

Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake.

And of course in the Philippines there were so many thousands of Americans that were captured by the Japanese and held and who were rescued by Filipino Americans or Filipinos I should say and by U.S. troops near the close of the war.

How do you tell troops who volunteered to fight for our freedoms that the country they fought for won't take care of them when they come back? In the time of war our troops and their families are supposed to be our number one priority.

Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.

For the sake of the troops for the love of the troops we must not add yet another casualty to this war. We must not let truth be a casualty of this war.

I've been giving free money seminars for the troops at Walter Reed Hospital and one of the Iraqi War Vets realized that the military wouldn't pay for the dental work he needed.

America's veterans and troops serving abroad today fought hard to preserve our red white and blue from the Revolutionary War to today's Global War Against Terrorism and Congress' action today is appropriate for one of our most sacred symbols.

There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops no matter how mistaken the war.

No one ever said that fighting the war against terrorism and defending our homeland would be easy. So let's support our troops law enforcement workers and our mission to keep our nation and our children safe in the days and years to come.

Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon.

Anyone who has to fight even with the most modern weapons against an enemy in complete command of the air fights like a savage against modern European troops under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.

It was helpful to have the American troops there in great strength. They knew there'd be consequences if they didn't move back. Now there has been some removal of the foreign forces.

There are tens of thousands of interactions every single day across Afghanistan between the Afghan troops and International Security Assistance Force. On most of those every single day we continue to deepen and broaden the relationship we seek.

And across Afghanistan every single day Afghan soldiers Afghan police and ISAF troops are serving shoulder-to-shoulder in some very difficult situations. And our engagement with them our shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with them our conduct of operations with them every single day defines the real relationship.

Many African leaders refuse to send their troops on peace keeping missions abroad because they probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations.