Troops in Iraq to be Home for the Holidays - End of the Iraq War
 

This is great news.:) I just wish military veterans received much more benefits than what they actually get. They just deserve so much more.

How has the news world not come to a screeching halt to discuss this? He just saved the US millions if not billions of dollars, saved people's lives, held to a promise, and in general, did the right thing.

FYP

I'm also surprised they're not discussing this, but not neccesarily because it's "the right thing." Don't get me wrong, I'm all about having the troops come home, but I'm wondering of removing ALL of our troops in 2 months and announcing it to the world is the best idea. I'm hoping that nothing but good comes from this, but I also don't want Iraq to collapse and for the last 10 years to have been for nothing.

The whole promise thing kind of bothers me, too. It makes me wonder if he made the sudden decision to do this so that he could use it to his advantage in his campaigning over the next year.

Well, this plan was announced quite a while ago and the number of troops has been reduced over time. Iraq is refusing to extend the immunity there for our soldiers past December 31. Let's take a look at why we were there:
1) False intelligence said that they had weapons of mass destruction, but we never found them. If we haven't found them after almost 10 years, we're not going to, if they even exist.
2) Saddam Hussein was an evil guy that we didn't trust and who was committing genocide against Iraquis. He's dead now.
3) While looking for #1 and #2, we pretty much destroyed their whole infrastructure, oh wait, that wasn't part of the goal. Rebuilding some of it was part of the goal in staying so long. I don't know how much progress we've made with that.
4) We wanted them to be a democracy so we got them to have elections and they have elections now.
5) Our mission was accomplished, per GWB, in 2003.

IMHO, it's time to let these people try to rebuild their country after all we put them through. Iraq wasn't much of a threat to us in the first place. We had them under our thumb already. All the other troops are gone.

I hope there are big parades when the last of our troops come home. They've been there far too long.

Yep...now time to get them out of Afghanistan too!

I was really glad to hear him say he's reducing the presence in Afghanistan as well. I've read a little about the history of Afghanistan (OK, my husband has, and he tells me the good parts), and interestingly there has NEVER been an invading or protective force that has been able to succeed there, all the way back to Genghis Khan. But countries keep trying!

I think we've done quite a bit better than expected, but peace, stability, freedom, etc., in that country will look a lot different there than most other places. The best thing we can do is throw money at education there, which is the best deterrent to future problems.

Dunno if they're gonna save money with withdrawing the troops. They're replacing troops making 30k a year with mercenaries, I mean contractors, making above 200k per year.

That was my first thought, but even if the merc make far more then a soldier, there are a lot less of them. In the long run it probably is cheaper.

That place feels like my generation's Vietnam sometimes :(