Last August 31, President Obama announced the withdrawal of “the last US combat brigade from Iraq”. That description of the withdrawal was highly misleading, since about 50,000 US Army troops stayed in Iraq, many of which are combat troops. That number does not count an even larger number of private military contractors (aka mercenaries) who also remain in Iraq.
Nonetheless, the Iraq war more-or-less faded from the news, replaced by reports from the Afghanistan war and, more recently, the US-led NATO attacks on Libya.
But the Iraq war is far from over. As was made clear by a recent Washington Post report, the Iraq war continues to cost US and Iraqi lives, not to mention vast sums of money and the US’s and Iraq’s economic health. According to the report, the US military death toll for June 2011 — fifteen troops — was the highest in two years — since before the so-called withdrawal of “combat troops”. This sad statistic brings the total US death toll in Iraq to 4466, and the total for all coalition forces to 4787 (source iCasualties.org).
The August 2010 “withdrawal of combat troops” was a lie, pure and simple. The Iraq war continues, and will continue to continue until every last US troop, regular or special forces, is out. According to the Obama administration’s stated plan, the remaining US troops are to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. However, neither US military commanders nor Iraqi government officials believe that deadline will be met.
US officials blame Iran for the recent spike in US troop deaths. They say Iranian Revolutionary Guard special forces are training Iraqi Shiite militias to be more effective in striking against coalition troops. If true, this development was entirely predictable eight years ago when the US launched the war. Iran and Iraq had been at war during the 1980s (with skirmishes continuing into the 1990s). The US then attacked and invaded Iraq twice: once in the early 1990s with Operation Desert Storm in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and again in 2003 ostensibly to keep Saddam Hussein from using his “weapons of mass destruction” (which didn’t exist), but actually following a neocon plan to control Iraq’s oil reserves. By attacking Iraq twice, the US weakened it to the point where Iran can now freely exercise its influence among Iraq’s now dominant Shiite population. In short, the US won the Iran/Iraq war for Iran by defeating Iraq and leaving the Shiites in charge.
[SF Chronicle, July 1 2011: US death toll in June in Iraq hits 2-year high]
Related PeacePundit Posts
- Last US Combat Brigade Departs Iraq
- US Military Likely to Remain in Iraq for Many Years
- Cost of Iraq War: Civilian Lives, Lost Goodwill, and High Debt
