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Devries is all too familiar with the death count numbers. Since the beginning, he has posted each and every death on his car. Devries posts the numbers as a reminder, a reminder to an American population that is all too quick to forget the war.
“I think the American people have forgotten the war, and it’s not high in their radar of things going on,” Devries said.
Although some Americans are troubled that the war has lasted this long, Devries said he’s not surprised in the least.
“I pretty much suspected the whole war would pan out like it has, a mini-Vietnam. I thought it would last longer, and I still think it will last longer,” he said.
As for alternatives, Devries said it’s as simple as not invading Iraq in the first place.
“It will stay as bad as it is or get worse. The sad part is that we have gotten ourselves into a lose-lose situation. We lose if we leave and we lose if we stay, so I think we should leave and it won’t be any worse if we stayed,” said Devries
From another perspective, Lucas Ridinger spent five months in Iraq during the first year of the war. Ridinger joined the army because he wanted to be a part of something larger than himself, and to have something like the military as an accomplishment in his life he said. But actually fighting in a war was not something Ridinger expected; he still recalls the moment he found out.
“My platoon sergeant came to my house. It was the first time I had met him, he just came in ‘Oh yeah we’re going to war’. He was all positive and happy about it, and at the time my family and myself were shaken up and still trying to absorb it all. He kind of had the wrong attitude,” Ridinger said.
As for the reasons of war, Ridinger says they were not important at the time.
“We all heard weapons of mass destruction and overthrow Saddam, all that stuff wasn’t at my level. I was concerned with training and making sure that my tank crew and myself were prepared and ready to go into a combat situation. I wasn’t worried about the real reason, just making it home,” Ridinger said.
After fighting for five months in Iraq, Ridinger returned home with experiences that formed his own opinion in his mind.
“Having strangers coming up to me in Baghdad and saying ‘Thank you’ changed my opinion at the time. Now I’m caught up in the why are we still there, what are we accomplishing?” said Ridinger
Part of the reason Ridinger believes he gets caught up in the controversy is the view the media has on the war. From experiencing it first hand, the media often seems tainted to the truth he experienced while being in Iraq.
“There are constant negative reports, you rarely hear about the positive aspects. That’s one thing I realized when I got back, its not like [the media] were lying, they were only telling one side of it,” Ridinger said.
Ridinger’s expectations of the war’s length were far off from the reality of what has happened.
“We expected the war to be over when we were pulled out, after we overthrew Saddam. Easy job, everyone goes home. As it turned out, that’s where the insurgents started to boil up, I never thought it would last this long,” Ridinger said.
Hearing civilian’s stories of Iraq with Saddam as dictator helped reassure Ridinger that the U.S.’s presence in Iraq was worthwhile.
“I asked them what it was like when Saddam was there. An uncle and his nephew came up to us and told us that we were in their way in the road; they were on the way to the hospital. We talked to them and they said ‘Saddam was a very bad man, he killed my father’ and we asked him why and he said he had no idea,” Ridinger said.
After almost five months Ridinger came back to the states with new experiences that had not only changed the way he viewed the war, but had changed himself in a major way. 
“On a personal level, I had changed. I had become institutionalized. I had an edge to the way I looked at things. People had a hard time adjusting to that,” said Ridinger.
Ridinger said he feels lucky to have just been a tank driver. Coming back, he realized he could live with a clear conscience.
Although coming home Ridinger says is the best feeling in the world, it was also one of the hardest parts of going to war.
“You take a chapter in your life and you put that on hold, then when you come back you try and regain all the pieces, and you cant,” he said.
Although the future of the war often seems unknown, Ridinger believed the U.S will always be over there.
“We will always have a constant military presence. Iraq is in the center of the Middle East, from a military standpoint it’s a great launching point,” Ridinger said.