Welcome home soilders!

[Pyree]

So after 9 years and more than 4000 deaths, US troops is finally going back home.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-22/obama-announces-iraq-troop-pullout/3594934

That also mean the Australian troops will be back as well right?

My friends in the army will be disappointed. He was so looking forward to be deployed there again. Or was it Afghanistan? Got to ask him again.

 

[knarl]

I don't understand this miracle!!

I mean... Obama talked about nothing more than how we shouldn't be in Afghanistan and Iraq, before he became President. And then he ran for the office, on an agenda of pulling all of our troops out.

It's taken almost his entire term of office, and he is now just announcing troop removal within the next 2 months, just in time for the election cycle. What miracle could have prompted this entirely coincidental coincidence???? :O

 

[Pyree]

IMO, still better than starting a war just after entering the oval office. ☮

 

[knarl]

I don't know how much better... he ran on a platform of pulling out all our troops, and then not only didn't do it, he actually engaged us in more conflict (Libya).

I am of course still glad the troops are coming home, but I could have given him some credit if he had done it right after taking office, or as soon as tactically possible. I cannot respect him for waiting to do it until literally weeks before an election cycle.

 

[jsc]

What miracle could have prompted this entirely coincidental coincidence????

It is just a coincidence.
"Nothing to see here. Move along."

 

[knarl]

"These aren't the Solyndra/Fast and Furious scandals... uh, I mean Droids you are looking for."

 

[chunkymonster]

I wonder if this draw down in troops will be accompanied by an increase in tax payer funded private security firms like the last draw down? I wonder if tax payers will have to continue subsidizing bribes to sheikhs and tribal leaders so our troops don't get shot at as they pull out?

 

[Reynod]

Good news for the troups.

 

[wanamingo]

Best news Ive heard all decade.

 

[COLGeek]

BTW, the drawdown timeline was agreed to by President Bush and his administration. President Obama and his team just implemented the original plan.

So, what is the big deal? It is past time for the Iraqis to handle their own security.

 

[Pyree]

1979 was the Vietnam War right? I wasn't born yet.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

nope n yep

 

[knarl]

1979 was the Vietnam War right? I wasn't born yet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html



Also from Wiki:

In 1976, Saddam rose to the position of general in the Iraqi armed forces, and rapidly became the strongman of the government... He was the de facto leader of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979.

Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on 22 July 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped (viewable via this reference[24]), Saddam claimed to have found a fifth column within the Ba'ath Party and directed Muhyi Abdel-Hussein to read out a confession and the names of 68 alleged co-conspirators. These members were labelled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one and taken into custody. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. The 68 people arrested at the meeting were subsequently tried together and found guilty of treason. 22 were sentenced to execution. Other high-ranking members of the party formed the firing squad. By 1 August 1979, hundreds of high-ranking Ba'ath party members had been executed.

The Al-Anfal Campaign was a genocidal[27] campaign against the Kurdish people (and many others) in Iraqi Kurdistan led by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid. The campaign takes its name from Surat al-Anfal in the Qur'an, which was used as a code name by the former Iraqi Baathist regime for a series of attacks against the peshmerga rebels and the mostly Kurdish civilian population of rural Northern Iraq, conducted between 1986 and 1989 culminating in 1988. This campaign also targeted Shabaks and Yazidis, Assyrians, Turkoman people and Mandeans and many villages belonging to these ethnic groups were also destroyed. Some reports cite Saddam Hussein's army as being responsible for 200,000 civilian deaths.

 

[Pyree]

Thank. There is no need for me to check my fact with wiki here. So many people with history knowledge here.

 

[Reynod]

Plenty of "alternative" historical interpretations.

Here is one for a giggle ... the overall strategy doesn't make much sense now the US is pulling out ... kinda destroys the article's main intent.

http://www.serendipity.li/iraqwar.htm

The main reason for them pulling out is because the job is done and the new Iraqi govt needs to get on with it.

Plus ... the cost of being there is huge.