Correlation is not causation, you know. Still:
All US troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year, President Barack Obama has announced.
He ordered a complete withdrawal from the country, nearly nine years after the invasion under President George W Bush.
About 39,000 US troops remain in Iraq, down from a peak of 165,000 in 2008.
The US and Iraq were in “full agreement” on how to move forward, Mr Obama said, adding: “The US leaves Iraq with our heads held high.”
“That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.”
Before the speech the White House said: “This will allow us to say definitively that the Iraq war is over,” and said the US and Iraq would work as two sovereign nations.
Maybe if we’d kept up blogging right the way along the administration could have been less aggressively disappointing.
Anyway, we still want it.
5 comments
October 22, 2011 at 9:58 am
NM
Worth noting that the expectations were for some troops to stay but the Iraqi parliament wouldn’t spring for immunity past 2011. Nice NYT story here.
October 22, 2011 at 10:03 am
eric
You mean the presidnt doesn’t actually have a peace policy?
October 22, 2011 at 12:22 pm
ari
Can I put an “e” in there for you? Or are you speaking Texan?
October 22, 2011 at 12:38 pm
eric
Shoulda said “preznit”.
October 26, 2011 at 11:02 am
J. Otto Pohl
I wonder where he will send them? Will it be Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, or maybe somewhere in Africa? Just as long as it is not Ghana I am not too worried.