Hi, how are you? I know you're busy over there in Iraq, Afghanistan and all the other locations where troops are stationed. but I hope you have time to read this. I really want you to know how I feel about you.

First, I should apologize for not getting more involved and letting you know how much I appreciate the sacrifice you're making for us fellow citizens. You know the routine, work, church and civic activities take a lot of time, but I should have taken a few minutes here and there to do more, like write you and maybe send a package or two of the things that you find hard to get.

I follow the news and I understand how your morale might be slipping a bit. All the news carries are more stories about the things that go wrong. I know that you have done more to make the quality of life better in the communities you find yourself in than ever makes the pages of the newspaper or on the air of the local television station. All of that doesn't seem to matter to those opposed to the war, in attacking what they see as wrong, they often speak negatively of service people. I guess in military terms they call that collateral damage. Whatever you call it though, innocent people are harmed by it.

I would apologize for that behavior but I find it inexcusable.

There is no reason all of you should have to bear the burden of the very, very few among you that do wrong. Any time you put a large group of people together there are going to be some bad apples. I'd bet, though, that there are fewer bad apples in your barrel than in most.

As to the cost of the war, I want you to know that I ask myself every day if what I have asked you to do, and what you are doing so well, is worth the price you are paying. I looked at what was happening inside Iraq and Afghanistan before we intervened and my stomach turned.

Afghanistan was actively harboring terrorists and assisting them to carry out attacks on us and on other countries around the world. There is no doubt in my mind that we were correct in going in to overturn the Taliban and give Afghans a chance to have control of their own country.

Iraq was a different matter. It was both easier and more difficult to assess that country. It was easy to figure out that it was an evil regime led by an evil man. Saddam Hussein killed more Iraqis during his reign than we did when we invaded, by far.

It was more difficult because we knew going in that we would suffer more casualties in Iraq than Afghanistan. Our losses have been more than 1,000 killed and many times that wounded.

I bear some of the guilt, if that is the word you want to use, for sending you overseas.

I support the effort to topple Hussein and to try to inculcate a democratic form of government in Iraq. For me it was a choice between letting the situation fester, with the chance that it would get worse, much worse; or lancing it and having a period when the situation was worse before getting better.

I think about the Kurds who were gassed. I think of the men who had to watch their wives and daughters be raped and killed in front of their eyes just because of a stray comment. I think of the people who were tortured simply for the pleasure Hussein and his equally evil sons got out of it. I have to say that I still believe it was the right thing to do, even if we get no benefit out of the invasion. I pray I'm right.

Your sacrifice is something I marvel at. It has been said that the generation that fought in World War II was the greatest generation.

I'm not so sure. I look at the lists of those killed and wounded and hear the comments from the troops still stationed overseas and I think we may be seeing one of the great generations in action, maybe even the best so far.

Thank you and God bless.