I seem to bet the farm, lose it, then win it back only to bet it again.

I've lost track of how many times since I started doing this that my net worth was down to pocket change.

I've lost track of how many times I've thought of giving up and getting on with normal adult life.

When I first told my great friend, business partner and college roommate, David, about my idea to go to Iraq and make documentaries and syndicated TV news--he thought I was nuts (but, I knew that if anyone could do it JD could - David).  Very few people believed me, until I was gone and in Iraq.

Keep in mind, at the time I was an Assistant to Kansas' Attorney General and wore a suit every day.

The absurdity of it all hit me one day in Kharmah, Iraq--yes, this a very strange thing to do.

When you are in Iraq, outside the concertina wire that surrounds the major bases you are going all-in.

Every day, in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of young men and women serving our country go all-in.  And they do it day in, day out for months at a time.

In the United States, a country where people are clamoring to bail out homeowners--including many 'flip-this-house' style speculators--the concept of voluntarily going all in with life and limb is unfathomable to most.

In our drive through strip-mall plastic disposable culture, it is difficult to believe there are young people willing to stand on the wall that holds back the forces of darkness.

But they exist.  

I have seen them and have video evidence to back it up .

They are not @#$% nuts.  They have something many do not, something many do not understand and even more fear--fortitude .

It is said that true courage is overcoming your fears.  If that is so, I am not a brave man.  Outside the Wire, I feel very little.  I have no hesitation at doing some very dangerous things.

But I have seen many young men overcome bouts of hesitation and step outside the wire.  When the call comes--they answer it with greatness on a daily basis.  That is the definition of fortitude.

I do not have the fortitude that is the hallmark of the young men in my documentaries.

Through all the twists and turns in the last three years of making documentaries about the war in Iraq I have come to accept that worry is a sin and cannot add a single moment to my life .

And that wherever I go, I am not alone .

I go all-in when I make my documentaries because I know, as Sgt. Jason Huber always said,  "when it is your time to go, it is your time to go " and nothing can change that.

I am not #$%& nuts.  I am not courageous.  I am just a guy who thinks there is a story that needs to be told and telling that story requires that I go all-in.

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