Six weeks after the start of the Iraq War, in May 2003, President George Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and made his famous declaration of victory.

Yet today, five years after the start of the Iraq War, the terrorist attacks continue, American casualties are near 4,000 and the number of wounded has reached almost 30,000.

(Further articles regarding Iraq and the part played by local men and women will appear in Friday's edition.)

Opinions were mixed among returning Iraqi War veterans on whether the U.S. should continue going all out to fight the war or think about withdrawing troops.

Some veterans, like Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Gary Rapoza, a 1993 Pahrump Valley High School graduate who fought in Iraq from March 2003 to May 2004, said the U.S. needs to remain committed in Iraq.

"Do we need to be there for the next 10, 15 years? I'd say we probably do, probably longer," Rapoza said.

He pointed to major military installations the U.S. has in Germany, Japan and Korea.

"Every country we fought a conflict in, we have a major installation. Why? Because we Americans have stability. If we pull out of Iraq whatever stability will be gone."

Rapoza said he'd rather fight terrorists in Iraq than on American soil. But he said, "I never in my life would've thought, 'Here we are five years later and there's more soldiers than when I first went in.' There should be a stabilization force now."

Army 1st Sgt. Kenton Falerios, who retired in 2006 after 22 years in the Army in Bosnia, Panama, El Salvador, and in Iraq from April 2003 to March 2004, agreed with much of what Rapoza said. He noted the U.S. fought in Vietnam for 10 years as well as in Bosnia.

"I could easily see us being in Iraq 10 years, if you look at all our major combat deployments and actions," Falerios said.

After he left Iraq, Falerios said the policy academy where he worked got bombed. A soldier who took his place was killed by a vehicle-based IED, or improvised explosive device.

"That's the bad part, when you fight people who believe when they blow themselves up they have a one-way ticket to heaven. We're not fighting a military force over there, we're fighting an idea. They don't wear uniforms so they can hide when they want to."

"Personally I'd like to see us get out of there," Falerios added. But he continued, "I can understand why we're there, and if we pull out too soon that will just embolden the terrorists to now strike us in the U.S. I'd rather fight them in their country than worry about my wife and my children getting attacked on the way to Wal-Mart."

Army Sgt. Cahlan Bowman, who was an infantry scout, said, "Ninety percent of the people over there hate us and don't like us and want us dead."

Bowman said if the intent was to spread democracy, Iraqis now have an operational government that should be able to take care of things.

"We need to complete whatever mission we went there for. But we need to figure out what that mission is and complete it, whether it's to bring freedom for those people or get oil, whatever it's for. We need to figure that out and come home," Bowman said.

Army National Guard Sgt. Logan Gibbs said he can see Iraq turning into another Vietnam, but without as many casualties.

"The way the economy is and the way people are tanking down, losing their homes, they need to pull out and do some work on our own country. This war is killing us. I'm all for killing the bad guys, but the war can only take so much," Gibbs said. "If it didn't affect our economy, our next door neighbors, anybody struggling because of it, I'd say stay there 10 years."

Marine Corps veteran Sgt. Jim Scott, said, "There's a million reasons people think we went in there, everything from oil to world domination. All I know is they said, 'You're supposed to go' and I went."

But Scott said he's concerned about "kids" who entered the infantry having just graduated from high school, who have families and little children, who are on their third or fourth tour of Iraq, waiting for the next IED or car bomb to explode.

"I would say let's go, let's get out of there. There are people dying and it's sad. You're not happy. That's just from being a grunt, that doesn't see the big picture," Scott said.

"There should be a withdrawal process and there should be stability, because we went in there and stability was gone in a matter of months," he said. "Since that happened we have a duty to fix that."

"There are guys that went back that second time, and they said, 'I don't know what they mean by secure.' That's ridiculous," Scott said. "They got deployed again in 2004. They got deployed in May, they got deployed in September 2006. Now we're into 2008, they've had at least three deployments to Iraq. Now they're supposed to come back into civilian life and do what? Go to college?"

The war has left some psychological wounds as well as physical injuries. Nye County Veterans Service Officer Ken Shockley said he's starting to work with some Iraqi veterans locally.

"PTSD is the biggest one in my office -- post traumatic stress disorder. That's the biggest thing I've seen with veterans coming by my office. They're having a hard time coping with life again after seeing their buddy killed," Shockley said.

"There was one kid who didn't want to drive under a bridge because bridges were really bad places to be," Shockley said. He learned those were often places where IEDs were planted.

Gibbs said he's still fighting his natural defensive training from his stint in Iraq from 2006 into 2007.

"If I got to go to the restaurant, I'm aware. If I go anywhere, when I go into crowds, I start checking people out," Gibbs said.

Bowman said he still thinks of Iraq less than six months after leaving the conflict.

"I'm used to swerving at a piece of trash in the middle of the road, scanning every person in the room for a gun. Any kind of crowd just kind of makes you nervous," he said.

Scott said when he returned home he had to adjust to being in a country where people weren't trying to attack him.

"You go to something like a Fourth of July festival and you hear those fireworks, and they sound a lot like mortar rounds. You can't get past that," he said.