British Prime Minister Tony Blair today paid tribute to the British forces in Iraq, giving thanks "from the bottom of my heart".
He said they were "new pioneers of soldiering in the 21st century" and also warned of the continuing danger from "a particular virus of Islamic extremism".
Iraq was a "test case" of the international community's ability to transform brutal and repressive states into democracies, he said.
The Prime Minister's comments came as he addressed the British servicemen and women gathered at the Shaibah logistics base near Basra, during a whistle-stop visit to Iraq.
Mr Blair told the troops: "It's a great honour for me to be here today. The first thing I want to say is a huge thank you for the work you're doing here.
"We know how much pride people have taken in Britain in the work that you have done and that reputation of the British armed forces - I don't think it's ever been higher than it is today.
"Whatever opinions people had on the war there is absolutely nobody back home who has anything other than enormous pride in the British armed forces and rightly so.
"The British armed forces today are the new pioneers of soldiering in the 21st century because the threat that we face today is not the one that certainly my generation grew up with.
"It's not the prospect of a big world war where countries are fighting each other."
The threat now was chaos, said the Prime Minister adding: "That chaos comes today from terrorism, from a particular virus of Islamic extremism that's a perversion of the true faith of Islam but is none the less incredibly dangerous."