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Into the night, they left.
Author: Raine Date: 08/19/2010 12:42:57

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal. Then-candidate, Barack Obama in a NYT Op-Ed; July 14, 2008

Last night much to my surprise, MSNBC showed the breaking news that the final combat troops were indeed leaving Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom has come to an end after 7 and a half years.

I know that this is far from over. I know that troops still remain there, but for this one brief moment, I take comfort knowing that this is finally coming to an end. There are no more combat troops in Iraq.

The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, which left Iraq this week, was the final U.S. combat brigade to be pulled out of the country, fulfilling the Obama administration's pledge to end the U.S. combat mission by the end of August. About 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, mainly as a training force.

"Operation Iraqi Freedom ends on your watch!" exclaimed Col. John Norris, the head of the brigade.

"Hooah!" the soldiers roared, using an Army battle cry.

Shortly before midnight Saturday, a group of infantrymen boarded Stryker fighting vehicles, left an increasingly sparse base behind and began scanning the sides of a desolate highway for bombs. For many veterans, including some who made the same trip in the opposite direction years ago under fire, it was a fitting way to exit.
[...]

By the end of this month, the United States will have six brigades in Iraq, by far its smallest footprint since the 2003 invasion. Those that remain are conventional combat brigades reconfigured slightly and rebranded "advise and assist brigades." The primary mission of those units and the roughly 4,500 U.S. special operations forces that will stay behind will be to train Iraqi troops. Under a bilateral agreement, all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011.

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/08/18/GR2010081807137.gif

Much can, will and should be debated about the plan to use more contractors to provide security. I'll leave it to our honor guard of Ask-A-Vet to do what he has done so well for the better part of this long and sad decade. The State Department will be taking over operations in October of 2011. This debate will rage on, but for now, just for today, our combat troops are coming home from Iraq. Promise kept.