'A new chapter': US officially ends Iraq war

[GNBRETT]

how many are still in Afganistan? I would much rather see those troops deployed to our borders since illegals do more damage to our country then some towel head halfway accross the world does......

 

[dadofthree]

how many are still in Afganistan? I would much rather see those troops deployed to our borders since illegals do more damage to our country then some towel head halfway accross the world does......

I have no area of expertise and this certainly wouldn't be one, and because of the crappy media, we only get the latest hollywood drama, or rockstar death, instead of facts about what's going on in the world,

but the 911 attack nearly collapsed our country not that anyone said it or printed it. It was a devastating attack and we don't like admitting it. We had $1 / gallon gas, now we have $4 / gal gas and it has been north of $6. That has had a devastating affect on our economy. Nothing in this country is consumed without the cost of fuel being a part of the price tag.

To the original OP. While I appreciate all those who have served and serve our country, the military has a purpose and that purpose has and will always cost lives. I'm no historian but the number of dead soldiers during what I believe is one of our nations longest conflicts is less than 10% of those lost in that small asian conflict. Each and every death is a loss to this nation. These folks gave the ultimate sacrifice regardless of politics. They simply did their duty with great honor.

 

[GNBRETT]

I have no area of expertise and this certainly wouldn't be one, and because of the crappy media, we only get the latest hollywood drama, or rockstar death, instead of facts about what's going on in the world,

but the 911 attack nearly collapsed our country not that anyone said it or printed it. It was a devastating attack and we don't like admitting it. We had $1 / gallon gas, now we have $4 / gal gas and it has been north of $6. That has had a devastating affect on our economy. Nothing in this country is consumed without the cost of fuel being a part of the price tag.

To the original OP. While I appreciate all those who have served and serve our country, the military has a purpose and that purpose has and will always cost lives. I'm no historian but the number of dead soldiers during what I believe is one of our nations longest conflicts is less than 10% of those lost in that small asian conflict. Each and every death is a loss to this nation. These folks gave the ultimate sacrifice regardless of politics. They simply did their duty with great honor.

agreed oil was are reason for being there. we went to Iraq for oil and oil alone. not WMD's. if it was for WMD's we would have left as soon as we knew there were no WMD's. we didnt. we stayed for another 9 years.

I get it, we need oil to function. what I dont get is thinkn that we needed to go to these third world countries to create some sort of government for these people that dont want our help and who will go back to killing each other under some sort of dictatorship by the end of the decade. soldiers dieing for these people is unacceptable imo.

for their sake I hope they get their chit together and stop living their lives in this holy war they have been fighting for God knows how many years. but considering our military is run by civilan politics it will result in us getting in the middle of some other civil war somewhere else sooner or later to justify government contracts. lotta money was made from those contracts and dirty politics were behind much of it.

 

[214 Busa]

World News - 'The war is over': Last US soldiers leave Iraq

A good day for the US military and the countries who took part in Iraqi Freedom. The gates to Iraq are officially closed.

Mission complete! On a sad note, R.I.P to the 4,487 US personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice and a speedy recovery to the more then 32,200 wounded. A total of 1.5 million US military personnel have had boots on the ground in Iraq.

Not happy to know that the US invested more than 76 million of hard working taxpayers money in new build or reconstructed property to be handed over to the Iraqi government. That money could've went towards rehab for the physically and mentally wounded that the VA poorly provides and/or take care of our homeless citizens here.

To those who stood by from the beginning to the end and supported the US military and our mission.......Thank You

 

[Blanca BusaLess]

214 and to all others a solemn thank you.

This is taken from a BBC news article:

MIDDLE EAST
14 December 2011 Last updated at 22:36 GMT
US flag ceremony ends Iraq operation
The US is withdrawing the last of its troops from Iraq, the final phase in the eight-year operation which has cost billions of dollars and many thousands of lives.
The onus of ensuring Iraq's security and rebuilding the devastated country now rests with Iraqi leaders.
Almost every figure related to the war is disputed, with none more keenly debated than the total number of Iraqi deaths. This is a summary of some of the key numbers and the arguments surrounding them.
TROOP LEVELS
US troops led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, in coalition with the UK and other nations.
The numbers of US "boots on the ground" have mostly fluctuated between 100-150,000 apart from the period of the "surge" in 2007.
This was President George W Bush's drive to improve security in the country, especially in the capital Baghdad, by sending in 30,000 extra troops.
Barack Obama made withdrawal from Iraq a key pledge in his presidential election campaign of 2008 and troop numbers have steadily fallen since he took office in January 2009.
On 19 August 2010, the last US combat brigade left the country, leaving behind 50,000 military personnel involved in the transition process.
British forces peaked at 46,000 during the invasion phase and then fell away year on year to 4,100 in May 2009 when the UK formally withdrew from Iraq.
The Royal Navy continued to train the Iraqi Navy until May 2011. The UK's presence in Iraq is now only as part of the Nato Training Mission - Iraq. That includes 44 military personnel, including a contingent at the Iraqi Military Academy.
CASUALTIES
The US has lost 4,487 service personnel in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom on 19 March 2003, according to the latest figures from the US Department of Defense.
By 31 August 2010, when the last US combat troops left, 4,421 had been killed, of which 3,492 were killed in action. Almost 32,000 had been wounded in action.
Since then, in what was called Operation New Dawn, 66 have died, of which 38 were killed in action. Three hundred and five have been wounded in action since 1 September 2010.
The UK lost 179 servicemen and women, of which 136 were killed in action.
Other coalition countries account for 139 deaths according to the icasualties website.
While coalition troop fatalities are reasonably well documented, deaths of Iraqi civilians and combatants are more difficult to track because of a lack of reliable official figures. All counts and estimates of Iraqi deaths are highly disputed.
The organisation Iraq Body Count has been collating civilian deaths using cross-checked media reports and other figures such as morgue records.
According to IBC there have been between 97,461 and 106,348 civilian deaths up to July 2010.
The most bloody period for civilian deaths was the month of invasion, March 2003, in which IBC says 3,977 ordinary Iraqis lost their lives. A further 3,437 were killed in April of that year.
The group says the difference between its higher and lower total figures is caused by discrepancies in reports about how many deaths resulted from an incident and whether they were civilians or combatants.
Other reports and surveys have resulted in a wide range of estimates of Iraqi deaths. The UN-backed Iraqi Family Health Survey estimated 151,000 violent deaths in the period March 2003 - June 2006.
Meanwhile, The Lancet journal in 2006 published an estimate of 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths related to the war of which 601,027 were caused by violence.
Both this and the Family Health Survey include deaths of Iraqi combatants as well as civilians.
An unknown number of civilian contractors have also been killed in Iraq. Icasualties publishes what it describes as a partial list with the figure of 467.
COST
The financial scale of the war is another area in which figures vary widely.
The respected and non-partisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the US will have spent almost $802bn (£512.8bn) on funding the war by the end of fiscal year 2011, with $747.6bn (£478bn) already appropriated.
However, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard's Linda Bilmes put the true cost at $3 trillion (£1.2tn) once additional impacts on the US budget and economy are taken into account.
The UK has funded its part in the conflict from the Treasury Reserve Fund which is extra money on top of the normal Ministry of Defence budget.
Whitehall figures released in June 2010 put the cost of British funding of the Iraq conflict at £9.24bn ($14.32bn), the vast majority of which was for the military but which also included £557m ($861m) in aid.
A summary of how the war was funded was also presented to the UK's Iraq Inquiry in January 2010.
DISPLACED PEOPLE
Sectarian violence in the conflict began to grow from early 2005. But the destruction of an important Shia shrine in February 2006 saw attacks between Sunni and Shia militias increase dramatically. This caused many Iraqi families to abandon their homes and move to other areas within the country or to flee abroad.
The International Organization for Migration, IOM, which monitors numbers of displaced families, estimates that in the four years 2006-2010, as many as 1.6 million Iraqis [pdf] were internally displaced, representing 5.5% of the population.
Of that total, nearly 400,000 people had returned by mid 2010, primarily to Baghdad, Diyala, Ninewa, and Anbar provinces, according to the IOM.

I'll apologize upfront if the below is offensive to anyone.

I don't think 'it' was worth it. I dont think 'it' was worth 4500 American lives, not even one.
I don't think 'it' was worth the 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians caught up in the mess. I don't think we are any 'safer' now than before. Saddam never was and never would have been a threat to the USA. We, the USA propped him up and supported him for years until he no longer served our purpose. We, yes WE are the ones who gave him er uh sold him the very chemical weapons we feared when invading. There was zero WMD and 'it' was a complete and total lie in the first place. I don't think the world is better off without Saddam. I don't the average Iraqi thinks that either. He is gone and we are gone and now the power vacuum will slowly take over. Some places need a dictator to keep them in line. Sad but true. I don't think any of us truly know the real purpose we went there. I think the only thing we accomplished was to further polarize and separate races and religions.

 

[Blanca BusaLess]

agreed oil was are reason for being there. we went to Iraq for oil and oil alone. not WMD's. if it was for WMD's we would have left as soon as we knew there were no WMD's. we didnt. we stayed for another 9 years.

I get it, we need oil to function. what I dont get is thinkn that we needed to go to these third world countries to create some sort of government for these people that dont want our help and who will go back to killing each other under some sort of dictatorship by the end of the decade. soldiers dieing for these people is unacceptable imo.

for their sake I hope they get their chit together and stop living their lives in this holy war they have been fighting for God knows how many years. but considering our military is run by civilan politics it will result in us getting in the middle of some other civil war somewhere else sooner or later to justify government contracts. lotta money was made from those contracts and dirty politics were behind much of it.

We get more oil from six other countries than Iraq. More oil comes here from Angola than Iraq. Why haven't we 'liberated' them? Oil was not the reason we went. They told us WMD, we were thinking oil but neither are true. Their plan worked perfectly.

United States | Oil Imports | OPEC

 

[zukracer]

Thanks to all of our service members, past and present for your service.

I wont get into right or wrong and why we have people in harms way in places we do, as they say "that's above my pay grade" BUT I would be willing to toss some $$ into the pot and bet that maps will be redrawn within the next few years if we do not keep a ready group near & available to go back into Iraq quickly. Syria and Iran both have the military might, drive and capability to start taking over parts of Iraq if the Iraqis cannot keep their collective shid together.

If either or both of them decided to make a full press to take over all or part of Iraq, I fear the past 10yrs will be nothing in terms of human and financial cost compared to what we could be staring down the barrel of then. Mix into that scenario that Iran now is a nuclear threat....well the game changes drastically