Five years have passed and 4,000 American lives have been lost since the conflict in Iraq began, making an invasion that was supposed to be simple and quick complex and difficult.

While everyone has their own opinion about the war's worthiness and purpose, sometimes the only way to understand the heroism and human toll of a conflict is to listen to the people fighting it.

Read some of the blogs written by military service men and women and you'll get a brutally honest and fascinating look at what it's like to survive in a war zone. Sean Dustman, a military blogger and "corpsman with the Marines in SoCal on his fourth Iraqi adventure," writes:

"Between the [military press releases] and the mainstream media, there's a huge vacuum with thousands of stories that are left untold, plus an entire demographic of folk who spend a major portion of their lives just reading blogs.
Ignoring them would be a waste, and that's where people like me come in and fill a small corner of that news vacuum. We try giving you a glimpse of our lives and occasionally, you'll find a diamond in the roughness of cyberspace."

We looked around the web for some of the most compelling quotes from military blogs. Take a look, and let us know which ones you think we missed.

Fighting, and Blogging, In Iraq