Last of the Combat Troops Leaving Iraq? Only in your Dreams
Bill Noxid
August 20, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Watching MSNBC’s coverage of ‘the last combat troops leaving Iraq’ for 3 hours reminded of a few brutal realities that still plague this country and this planet. The first being just how far this country remains from any semblance of reality. It’s the kind of delusional denial that truly can only be believed when witnessed from within. As Keith Olbermann was describing the cinematic quality of the “Strykers driving into your living room,” I could really think of only one thing – The aftermath of a 7.5 year all out United States operation to decimate a people and their society.
There’s no way to comprehend the scope and facets of this operation, because you would need a Pentagon for that. From the first day after initial conquest when the money disappeared from the banks and their record of civilization was decimated by the looting of their museums, it was like any other colonial conquest in history, except every excruciating moment of this one was on television. The following 7.5 years of the assimilation of a country went as diagrammed.
From control (denial) of power, water, and even seed monopolization, to toxic contamination of the gene pool and re-education ‘schools,’ to monopolization of natural resources, to fostering drug addictions and self-perpetuating violence, etc., what took a hundred years to do to Native Americans was accomplished in under a decade. Quite an example of lessons learned from hundreds of years of colonization.
And in the name of all that is Holy, please do not delude yourself into believing this war is over. 50,000 troops will remain, an ‘unknowable’ number of contractors, mercenaries, and an embassy that makes the Vatican look like the summer home will remain. Certainly, the colonization of Iraq was one of the fastest and most efficient in history. It also needs to be the last.
So there are no delusions of the reality we have left for the Iraqi people, please watch the short videos below. Then, while you’re sitting with your family watching the MSM pundits debate whether the war was ‘worth it’ or not, think about how long you could survive the kind of ‘Freedom’ we have heaped on the Iraqis. Face the reality, and forget the cinema. See the following videos.
Iraq War Widows:
The Poisoning of Iraq:
Unknown Illnesses:
Still No Electricity in Baghdad:
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Leaving Iraq – Last Combat Unit Crosses the Border
By: David Dayen
Firedoglake.com
Thursday August 19, 2010 6:21 am
It’s a bit odd to discuss the last combat teams leaving Iraq when the 50,000 “advisers” will still have guns and combat training and the ability to support Iraqi security forces when needed. But this is the schedule that was laid out even before Barack Obama became President, and he followed it to the letter, even a couple weeks early, in fact.
The last U.S. combat troops crossed the border into Kuwait on Thursday morning, bringing to a close the active combat phase of a 7½-year war that overthrew the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, forever defined the presidency of George W. Bush and left more than 4,400 American service members and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead [...]
“We are done with operations,” Lt. Steven DeWitt of San Jose, Calif., said as his vehicle reached Khabari Crossing on the border.
“This was a professional soldier’s job,” he said, describing “a war that has defined this generation of military men and women.
“And today it’s over,” he said.
It’s over and it should never have began. We went to war under false pretenses, for selfish reasons, and without any semblance of a plan. We stumbled into Baghdad expecting flowers and sweets. We left 4,400 men and women for no discernible reason (UPDATE: Not to mention the hundreds, not tens, of thousands of Iraqis), for a war and occupation that didn’t make us safer. We sparked a civil war that still simmers under the surface. And today it’s over, to quote the soldier up top.
Only it’s not over. As State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told MSNBC, “We have a long-term commitment to Iraq.” Even after the troops and the military advisers leave by the end of 2011 – and I do believe fully that they will – American civilians and private contractors will play a large role.
As the United States military prepares to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning a remarkable civilian effort, buttressed by a small army of contractors, to fill the void.
By October 2011, the State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police, a task that will largely be carried out by contractors. With no American soldiers to defuse sectarian tensions in northern Iraq, it will be up to American diplomats in two new $100 million outposts to head off potential confrontations between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish pesh merga forces.
To protect the civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. Defending five fortified compounds across the country, the security contractors would operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said.
So we’re trading the US military for DynCorp. And that’s not even good enough for some of those named in the article, who want “strategic patience” and a continued military presence beyond 2011 (the Obama Administration plan calls for “several dozen to several hundred officers in an embassy office who would help the Iraqis purchase and field new American military equipment” – we’re not going to let an opportunity go by to sell some weapons of war, after all).
So far, the President has resisted those calls, despite a chaotic political situation with no government for going on five months. America has had trouble leaving their wars. Some men and women, it always seems, get left behind. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.
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US Announces Second Fake End to Iraq War
by Jason Ditz,
Antiwar.com
August 18, 2010
It was another of those great TV moments. Embedded reports filming as the “last” brigade of American troops in Iraq cross the border into Kuwait bringing over seven years of unhappy conflict to its final, conclusive end. America was, at last, at peace.
But like so many other great TV moments, this one was a scripted fantasy, a fake exit done purely for political gain by an increasingly unpopular president trying to look like he is keeping at least one campaign promise.
It was perhaps a different sort of scripted, mythical end to the Iraq War than the last one, the May 1, 2003 “Mission Accomplished” speech of President Bush, but it was no more real, as over 50,000 US troops remain on the ground in Iraq tonight.
The “end of the war” may bring some measure of relief to the American people, but it must be something of a sombre moment for those 50,000 troops, as they continue to go into combat operations with the bulk of the American public believing, because their president told them so, that the war is over and combat operations have ended.
Officials have been pretty straightforward about what really happened, not that it has been picked up by the media, which has preferred the more pleasant narrative of a decisive military victory. Instead, the US simply “redefined” the vast majority of its combat troops as “transitional troops,” then removed a brigade that they didn’t relabel, so they could claim that was the “last one.” Even this comes with the assumption that the State Department, and a new army of contractors, will take over for years after the military operations end, assuming they ever do.
And it worked, at least for now. All is right with the world and the war is over, at least so far as anyone could tell from the TV news shows. But as violence continues to rise across Iraq, and July saw the worst violence in over two years, it will likely be difficult for the Obama Administration to keep this war a secret for much longer.
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Iraq sees last of US combatants
Press TV Iran
Thu Aug 19, 2010 3:4PM
The last US combat brigade has left Iraq in line with Washington's plans to implement a complete withdrawal from the war-torn country in the near future.
The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division departed for neighboring Kuwait on Thursday.
"The combat troops have finished moving," said Captain Russell Varnado at a Kuwait-based US base.
"The troops are transitioning now. They are scheduled to go back home soon."
The US started and led the Iraqi invasion in 2003 based on allegations that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Later findings, however, proved that the country was not in possession of WMD, and that US officials who rallied support for the Iraqi invasion knew about it.
Iraqi civilians, meanwhile, bore the brunt of the violence, as militancy took grip of the country in reaction to the long-drawn US presence in Iraq.
Examples of such attacks and the damage inflicted on the civilian population included the two American attacks on Fallujah in central Iraq in 2004.
Recently, a study, titled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," revealed that the toxic trail left by the American onslaughts have proved deadlier than the US attack on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were targeted by atomic bombs in 1945.
Over one million Iraqis have died during the invasion, says California-based investigative project, Project Censored. The operations, on the other hand, claimed the lives of nearly 4500 American soldiers.
Thursday's withdrawal has left some 56,000 troopers stationed across Iraq, 6,000 of whom are to pull out by September 1.
The rest of the American servicemen, who will remain beyond that date, are supposed to establish a permanent mission, despite Washington's clams that it plans to fully terminate its military involvement by the end of next year.
They are reportedly slated to serve with an open-ended active duty in the Balad and al-Asad airbases respectively in north and west of Baghdad, the Victoria base in the capital, situated near Baghdad International Airport, as well as the Nasiriyah base south of the country.
HN/SAR/AKM
