Over twelve hundred U.S. Army soldiers and Marines celebrated Independence Day by committing themselves to another four years of service to the country. Gen. David Petraeus was on hand at Camp Victory, U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, as the men and women took the oath, filling an atrium in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces to the bursting point. The troops sang "God Bless America" and heard a roll call of the states at the ceremony, and were treated to a traditional barbecue in honor of the Fourth afterwards.

Some of the troops told interviewers that the re-upped for the $15,000 bonus, but most expressed a dedication to duty and their comrades characteristic of the military. Many are on their second and third tours in Iraq, and it is a measure of their devotion that these soldiers would volunteer for more duty far from home and family.

The military has enjoyed very high re-enlistment rates throughout the war in Iraq. The large numbers of returning soldiers has helped to offset more sluggish recruitment numbers. As conditions in Iraq improve, and units are regularly rotated out of the country, the veteran troops will impart their war experience to relatively green units, helping to build an even more capable military.

Marine First Lieutenant Andrew Grayson was acquitted yesterday of charges that he helped cover up the 2005 killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The Haditha case had become a cause celeb for anti-war liberals and some Democratic members of Congress, who said that it demonstrated the strain that U.S. forces were under in Iraq and amounted to Iraq's My Lai. But the facts of the case have always been in dispute. Eight Marines were initially charged with various crimes in the incident. That list is down to three as military prosecutors dropped charges against five of the Marines. Grayson was the first to face court martial for his alleged role.

On November 19, 2005, Marine convoy traveling through Haditha came under attack as a roadside bomb killed one Marine and wounded two others. Prosecutors alleged that the Marines then fanned out through the town, entering two homes and killing the civilians in revenge for the death of their comrades. But the Marines accused have always maintained that they were following the rules of engagement and were acting to prevent further attacks on the convoy.

Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha (PA), a leading anti-war member of the House, said a little over two years ago that the Haditha Marines killed the civilians, "in cold blood," using the incident as evidence of his contention that the troops were coming under increasing strain. "There was no firefight, there was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them," he said. Murtha made his comments in the midst of the Democratic campaign to take control of Congress in the November elections. Democrats were making the case that the Iraq War was hopelessly lost and that the United States should withdraw its forces. Democrats won that election, but the troop surge and the resulting reductions in violence in Iraq have thwarted their efforts to bring an end to the war. To date, Murtha has not apologized for his comments.

Men are pigs. There's no getting around it. I know I might take some heat for this position, but I've just got to put it right out there. We don't put the toilet seat down (even though we've got gravity on our side), we spit too much in the aggregate, and we just don't frickin' listen!

Jake Tapper reports that Former President Bill Clinton related a somewhat familiar anecdote today:

"I remember when we were young, right out of law school, she went down and tried to join the Army and they said 'Your eyes are so bad, nobody will take you,'" he said, after heralding her record on issues of concern to the military, such as body armor and access to health care.

Tapper goes on to explain that this diverges from a version told by Hillary in 1994:

The original story was that in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1975, Hillary walked into a local Marines recruiting office. The Marine recruiter looked at her, she recalled, and asked how old she was. Twenty-seven, she said.

"He looked at me, and in those days that was before I learned how to wear contact lenses," Sen. Clinton told a crowd of women veterans in 1994. "I had these really thick glasses on. He said, 'How bad's your eyesight?' I said, 'It's pretty bad.' ...Finally said to me, he said, 'You're too old. You can't see. And you're a woman....But maybe the dogs (the Army) would take you.'"

Well, which is it? Army or Marines? I had to know, and so will you.

The Pentagon began what could be termed as a duplication of the successful troop surge strategy in Afghanistan when it ordered 3,200 Marines to prepare to deploy to that country Monday. The Marines, most from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, were told over the weekend to begin preparing for deployment. About 1,000 of the newly assigned forces, from the Marine 2nd Battalion based in Twentynine Palms, California, will be used to help train units of the Afghan Army to take over security operations from U.S. forces. The remainder would be sent to southern Afghanistan to assist in the fight against a stubborn Taliban led insurgency. The increase would bring the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 30,000, its highest level since the start of the war in 2001.