CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Pentagon Wednesday morning that the United States and coalition partners concluded Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq, meaning troops will now return home to America.<\/p>\n
In a statement, , “The United States remains committed to counterterrorism and will continue to work with Iraq to ensure ISIS can never reconstitute from Iraqi territory.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
White House officials say this comes after a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region.<\/p>\n
WINK News spoke with veterans at VFW Post 8463 in Cape Coral about the news. Several say they feel grateful and relieved, knowing firsthand what it’s like to serve in Iraq.<\/p>\n
“We were there like probably a year and a half. Came home in 09. It’s just a hard transition. You got to really take it slow, and then I stayed in again until I deployed again in 2020 to 2021. That was hard coming back to COVID,” Thompson said.<\/p>\n
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Ben Santana, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq from 2002 to 2004, shared similar sentiments.<\/p>\n
“I feel like it’s time that we settle our stuff and just let them come back. Have these new military personnel enjoy more of their life instead of just having to be over there and having to police other things that I feel like we don’t have to police,” Santana said.<\/p>\n
John Thompson echoed those thoughts. “We’ve been there a long time. We’ve been out over 20 years. It’s time to pass it on. Let the Iraqis and Afghans take over what they got to do. Hopefully, they can control it,” he said.<\/p>\n
Santana served during a time when America was freshly grieving the heroes and lives lost from 9\/11. He spoke about the importance of connecting with fellow veterans who understand shared experiences.<\/p>\n
“Coming back from something like that, you can’t talk to a normal person. Normal person won’t know what you’ve experienced, what you’ve been through. Talking to another veteran that has shared experiences, you can bond through that and then move on forward and not really relive the things, but push to understand what happened and just accepting things,” Santana said.<\/p>\n
What these veterans want the troops and their families to know is that they have an army of support waiting for them here at home. “The post has helped me gain a lot of freedom that I didn’t have when I first came out, and the people there are really willing to help,” Santana said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You’re not alone. Just if you need help, please, please reach out. Any veteran will be there in a second,” said Vanessa Thompson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Pentagon Wednesday morning that the United States and coalition partners concluded Operation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3017,209,211,210,28,2366,2367,164495,137440,461,41808,116654,164494,9102,38979],"class_list":["post-415207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-america","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-florida","tag-iraq","tag-isis","tag-john-thompson","tag-military-history","tag-military-operations","tag-pentagon","tag-united-states-marine-corps","tag-war-on-terror","tag-white-house","tag-wink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}