| Posted: Spider @ Thu Aug 19, 2010 12:15 am |
IRAQ-KUWAIT BORDER — 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.
The final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., began entering Kuwait about 1:30 a.m. (6:30 p.m. Wednesday ET), carrying the last of the 14,000 U.S. combat forces in Iraq, said NBC’s Richard Engel, who has been traveling with the brigade as it moved out this week.
NBC News video showed the last Stryker vehicles rolling up to the gate. A guard pulled it back, and the vehicles drove through. The gate closed behind them.
P.J. Crowley, a spokesman for the State Department, told msnbc TV that while the departure is “an historic moment,” he said, it is not the end of the U.S. mission in Iraq.
“We are ending the war ... but we are not ending our work in Iraq,” he said. “We have a long-term commitment to Iraq.”
The White House website first trumpeted the "End of Combat in Iraq" before backtracking to note that the official end of combat operations is Aug. 31.
Still, and as the last soldiers reached Kuwait after midnight, they said they were proud of their effort.
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50,000 advisers to remain
The timing of the final departure was a closely held secret, and the end came in dramatic fashion two weeks ahead of the Aug. 31 deadline President Barack Obama had set to withdraw combat forces and close Operation Iraqi Freedom, which the U.S.-led multinational coalition began March 20, 2003, in the belief that Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the West.
In a statement, Obama called the troops’ withdrawal a “milestone in the Iraq war” and said, “I hope you’ll join me in thanking them, and all of our troops and military families, for their service.”
At one point, the United States had blanketed the country with nearly a quarter-million-strong combat force; by the end of the month, Obama said, about 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in the country, in a non-combat role providing support and training for the Iraqi military.
“This is an extremely interesting night to see these pictures, but I think people need to understand ... this is a transition from one that is military over seven years to one that is a transition to diplomacy,” Crowley said.
“It’s still a dangerous place,” he said.
Christopher R. Hill, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, said it was now Iraq’s responsibility to form a stable long-term government and Washington’s responsibility to “see Iraq as a country and not as a war.”
In remarks Wednesday to the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington, Hill said he was optimistic about the prospects of a stable government, but he added, “If it’s instant gratification you’re looking for, you had better look elsewhere.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38744453/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/
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