Who loves Stephen Colbert?

A hot dog vending cart was wheeled back and forth. Cocktail waitresses hurried past with trays full of beer. Vice President Joe Biden led New York Yankees great Yogi Berra by the arm.

Such was the bizarre, red-white-and-blue circus backstage at comedian Stephen Colbert's celebration of U.S. troops' return from Iraq. The Comedy Central host pulled out all the stops Wednesday night for the first part of his two-episode special, "Been There: Won That: The Returnification of the American-Do Troopscape."

It was a somewhat rare show of exultation to what President Barack Obama has called the end of combat operations in Iraq. Some 50,000 troops remain in the Middle East country, where local forces have a tenuous hold on security. Fighting in Afghanistan also continues.

Those truths were never far from "The Colbert Report" on Wednesday, but Colbert made the evening's tone clear at the start.

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