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  • 2008-09-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Largest Re-Enlistment Ceremony Ever (en)
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  • When the United States celebrates its Independence Day, not all of those celebrations take place within the U.S. Many Americans who are members of the armed services, are employed in government service, or are otherwise stationed away from their home country celebrate the 4th of July in a variety of sites around the world. One such away-from-home Independence Day celebration, at Camp Victory (a U.S. military base near Baghdad), included a mass re-enlistment ceremony held in the Al-Faw Palace on 4 July 2008. The event, which included over 1,200 members of the armed forces, was claimed by the U.S. military as the largest re-enlistment ceremony ever held: Example: [Collected via e-mail, July 2008] Gen. David Petraeus, head of all coalition forces in Iraq, administered the oath in Saddam Hussein's former Al-Faw Palace in Baghdad. John Phillip Sousa's marches blended with roars of Freedom, hoo-ah and oo-rah from the men and women, many of them carrying their weapons, as they re-upped in their service branches. Money was an incentive for many but so was a belief in what they are doing more than five years into a war far away from their homes. Hundreds were in their second and third tours in the combat zone. There's no place I'd rather be to celebrate America's birthday than here in Iraq, said Petraeus, who described the troops as America's new 'Greatest Generation.' The general compared the re-enlistees' raising of their right hands to the language on most award citations: In keeping with the finest traditions of our military services. He said the combined total of their additional service amounted to 5,500 years. After the ceremony in one of the late dictator's 99 palaces — this one used to entertain loyal members of his Baathist party — the newly committed troops ate pizza and chocolate cake and drank Gatorade. Despite the claims made in the text accompanying the photographs displayed above, the July 4th re-enlistment ceremony in Iraq was covered by national news services such as the Associated Press and reported by a number of major newspapers and other U.S. news outlets. (en)
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