All statehouse squabbles aside, Topeka’s a nice place compared with Iraq.

“I’m not ready to go back yet,” State Rep. Lee Tafanelli told a Jefferson County crowd Saturday.

Tafanelli has been back debating issues on the Statehouse floor for months now after what he deemed a successful stint commanding the 891st Engineering Battalion in Iraq.

But even at the Jefferson County Republican Central Committee meeting, held at the American Legion in Perry, Tafanelli had to field questions about the worth of the now 3-year-old Iraq war.

After a presentation about his time in Iraq, including missions to disarm roadside bombs and building the detention wing of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, several audience members asked about new polling that shows both civilians and U.S. troops in Iraq think the U.S. occupation should end sooner than later.

“If you want to look for something bad, you don’t have to look too far over there to find it,” Tafanelli admitted.

The war there is very real, he said. The roadside bombs he worked so hard to disarm still kill people, and U.S. forces have struggled with the violence of the insurgency.

“I can’t describe the carnage and the wreckage you see,” he said.

But, he said, the part that people don’t always see is the good that troops have done for regular Iraqi citizens. He imagined that if asked, most troops in Iraq would say that they’ve helped change Iraqi’s lives for the better since the war began.

During his stint overseas, he watched Iraqis vote for the first and second times in history. He assisted Iraqis with infrastructure problems, including loss of electricity and damaged homes.

“We worked with villages that really had a lot of need,” Tafanelli said.

Now, Tafanelli will try to address some of the needs of his constituents. People Saturday brought up property taxes for senior citizens, wondering whether a bill Tafanelli sponsored before his departure would still find its way through the Legislature.

“That’s something I’m going to continue to fight,” he said.

But as the featured speaker at the event, Iraq became the topic of the day.

And looking back after two of the his battalion’s soldiers died and 11 others were injured, the Jefferson County Republican described a bittersweet experience in the heat of the Iraqi desert.

“It was not an easy challenge,” he said.