Five weeks in Hell was in store for the first guys on the beaches and 84% of those going in became a casualty. 4,926 were killed in the action and an additional 1,401 died later from their wounds. 19,217 were wounded in the battle and 494 were never found. A total of 26,038 made the sacrifice to take the island of Iwo Jima.

The first attack by the Americans on the home islands of Japan was fierce. The battle raged on from February 19 until March 26, 1945 and in those 36 days the world saw some of the fiercest fighting of the entire war.

He was wrong. His acts were stupid. He messed up. He lied. After many weeks Tiger Woods ended his silence on his personal life and made his first step toward mending his damaged reputation.

He gave his mea culpa to a few friends at a golf course with the rest of the national press capturing the moment via a live feed. We all heard the statement over and over again. Tiger took the blame.

It was offered and he was begged by many to stay and yet he walked away from the trappings of his office. George Washington had served his country and served it well. He had fought for our liberty and led an army made up of volunteers who joined for a short term and then left. His was an army probably best described by the British as a group of rabble. The army was ill-equipped and under paid. They were underfed and poorly clothed and yet they trusted in George Washington.

He was a stern leader. He would have men punished for not following orders and he demanded adherence to protocols. While his troops held their own against the mightiest army on the face of the earth he proved to be a daring leader.

A couple of weeks ago, the President of the United States rolled out his budget proposal for the fiscal year 2011. It is a staggering $3,800,000,000,000 budget. Yes, $3.8 trillion.

Nobody can possibly comprehend the amount of money involved and yet we have grown to accept these staggering knee-buckling figures. It now seems to me that Congress and the White House consider rounding errors in the tens of millions of dollars.

It is an organization that has helped turn boys into men and those men into leaders. It traces its roots back to a brave leader in the British Army who held out for seven months against the enemy during the Boer War and even though he and his troops were outnumbered they saved the African town of Mafeking.

Robert Stevenson Smyth Baden-Powell went home to his native England a military war hero and used his new found fame to promote his idea of an organization for boys. He rewrote his military text "Aids for Scouting" which helped his military men and in the rewrite made the book appropriate for young boys.

Last week we passed a milestone -- President Obama has been our leader for one year and so now it should be fair to look at what has happened under his watch.

Gitmo is still in operation. The man of change made it a point of telling us and the world how he was closing Gitmo in one year and that people would see that his administration was going to show that America was through operating such a camp. I wrote one year ago that I was concerned with where those inmates would go. Well it seems that the president ran into a problem with the closing as it appears more difficult than he thought.