There are some who choose to see Veteran's Day as an opportunity to mourn lives lost by referring to fallen soldeirs as sheep who died in the service of evil men. Others choose to acknowledge those same soldiers as individuals, each with their own reasons for choosing to defend their country. These are the people that were willing to die if it means that future generations that they could never know will have the choice to live in liberty and freedom.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing of worth for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made so and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” John Stewart Mill (1806-1873)

Here are some thoughts from veterans of the current conflict. They're not hard to find.

``Well,'' he said, ``this is the suck tape. If you are watching this one, then you know I won't be coming home.'' He told Deanna and the children that he knew it would hurt "but I will always be there with you."

He added that there were things left undone in Iraq the last time he was in that part of the world in the Gulf War and that he believed we had to go back if the people of Iraq were to have a better life and better opportunity like his family enjoys here.

"The price is worth it," Sgt. Salie said. "In my heart."

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Army Pfc. Jeff Coyne lived through the blast of friendly fire that killed three from his unit in Iraq.

He thinks about them constantly as he hobbles through the daylight hours, trying to strengthen damaged muscles in his back, chest and abdomen. After dark, he struggles to sleep because of nightmares about the explosion.

A boyish-looking 28 in his black crewcut, Coyne went to war uncertain whether the cause was just or worthwhile. Now, even as he mourns for his fallen friends, he has been transformed into a believer.

Nothing President Bush said or did influenced Coyne. Rather, the soldier from Dormont was swayed by the sad conditions of the Iraqi people.

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Many times I wonder if it is worth it. Then I think of the 3-year-old boy dressed in a suit watching his daddy graduate as a new Iraqi soldier. As he runs toward me, I am in battle uniform and ballistic armor, with weapon at high ready. He smiles big, waves and says, "I love you, American!" Yeah, it's worth it.

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MARGARET WARNER: And Sgt. White, how do you feel? Do you feel the sacrifice is worth it? Did you feel that way about yourself personally when you left this spring?

SGT. SAM WHITE: Absolutely, I did. And what I did is I looked at the town next to us, the town that we were protecting, the town that we took antibiotics to the sick children, food, candy on a regular basis in the town. And they saw us, my squad, personally diffuse a daisy chain mine. And I don't know if you know what a daisy chain is, but the few that don't know, it's several mines linked to each other next -- they're connected by wires, and when one goes off, the rest of them go off. And they saw us diffuse this right next to their soccer field.

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SGT. BENJAMIN FLANDERS: I think it was worth it in the sense that when I think about the enemy we were confronting. You know, this is an enemy that was targeting civilians. It was targeting their own security force, as well as political leaders within a democratic process. And without any -- a viable police force, a security force for Iraq to have, I felt it was our responsibility to stay until we could stand that back up, reconstitute it. So it was worth fighting for people that couldn't fight for their selves, definitely.

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For Rhodes, 23, risking life and limb was worth it. He believes in the value of the Operation Enduring Freedom, the government’s name for the Iraq war. “Every single thing somebody’s done over there was worth it,” he says. Those views made some of the news from Champaign tough to stomach. Early in his Iraq tour, Rhodes spotted a photo of a campus protester on the front page of the Daily Illini. The protester was holding an American flag upside down with a peace sign spray-painted on it. “That got me pretty upset,” he says.

Upon returning to campus in 2004 to finish his political-science degree, Rhodes learned that opposition to the war was widespread even though public protests were few. “I remember a kid standing up in class and saying, ‘I’ll be damned if I ever go to Iraq. I’d sooner go to Canada.’ They’d say bad things about the president. Sometimes they’d say, You’re just warped by the military and brainwashed and it’s all about money and they don’t care about you.” Rhodes would often keep quiet. But sometimes, he recalls, “I’d say, I was there. Where were you?”

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When Sergeant Rogers went home for a two-week leave in July, his brother Derrick asked whether the war and all the deaths were worth it. "His answer was simple," Derrick Rogers said. "He said, 'If I didn't feel like it was worth it, I wouldn't be there.' ''