Bush gave Petraeus back-channel support

President George W. Bush and General David Petraeus did the heavy lifting, with the help and support of thousands and thousands and thousands of the loyal and the brave. Together, they will be credited by history with the single greatest contribution toward peace in the Middle East: Hope. God bless our military and our leaders with wisdom, protection, and victory.

The piece missing from this article is the conflict our troops had to face at home that forced the back channel support. For those three enablers to succeed required integrity. Integrity to an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and obey the orders of the Officer appointed over them and trust in the person who sent you to uphold the oath. It joins our military with our government and its people. The Democrats are somewhat lacking in the integrity that binds us. You cannot base trust integrity on a paradox of supporting the troops but not the war. You cannot base national integrity on a will to lose the war. You cannot base leadership integrity on your political leaders unsubstantiated statements profiling those defending the Constitution as murderers, torturers and Nazi's. In addition to our military overcoming the conflict on the battlefield, they also had to overcome the lack of integrity from their elected representatives and the mainstream media on the homefront. The National Defense medal will have an entirely different meaning to this generation of heroes, they won the war on two fronts.