AP: U.S. to withdraw all troops from Iraq by end of 2011

[emazur]

http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-us-drops-keeping-troops-iraq-212223355.html

The decision ends months of hand-wringing by U.S. officials over whether to stick to a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline that was set in 2008

...

But a senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

A senior U.S. military official confirmed the departure and said the withdrawal could allow future but limited U.S. military training missions in Iraq if requested.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

...

Regardless of whether U.S. troops are here or not, there will be a massive American diplomatic presence.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and the State Department will have offices in Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk as well as other locations around the country where contractors will train Iraqi forces on U.S. military equipment they're purchasing.

About 5,000 security contractors and personnel will be tasked with helping protect American diplomats and facilities around the country, the State Department has said.

The U.S. Embassy will still have a handful of U.S. Marines for protection and 157 U.S. military personnel in charge of facilitating weapons sales to Iraq. Those are standard functions at most American embassies around the world and would be considered part of the regular embassy staff.

 

[moderate libertarian]

Iraq freedom war could be coming to end over "immunity" issue? I thought going broke would have been the real cause.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...-immunity-for-troops-in-Iraq-but-not-in-Korea

October 10, 2011 7:07 pm

Iraq threatens to break military links with US


By Camilla Hall in Abu Dhabi and Anna Fifield in Washington

Baghdad is threatening to break its military relations with Washington at the end of this year and use private contractors to train its armed forces, as the two sides struggle to agree on terms that would see a small number of American troops remain in Iraq next year.

The two sides have agreed in principle that several thousand US troops should stay in Iraq in a training capacity after the official end of the American mission at the end of the year, but they have become bogged down over whether to grant US troops immunity from prosecution if they commit crimes.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a229ee38-f355-11e0-b11b-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1assE1EXe

 

[tsai3904]

White House says decision has not been reached.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66050.html

The Obama administration is knocking down a report that all but a small security force will be pulled from Iraq by the end of the year, saying instead that discussions are still ongoing.

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

About 5,000 security contractors and personnel will be tasked with helping protect American diplomats and facilities around the country

This says it ALL.

What other nations have to have that many protectors and 160 active military soldiers for their caring and personable relations.


Amazing how Dumbed-Down Americans are, they can't put the few pieces of the puzzles.

BINGO! laundering US tax dollars through puppet nations

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and the State Department will have offices in Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk as well as other locations around the country where contractors will train Iraqi forces on U.S. military equipment they're purchasing

 

[LibertyEagle]

Would these 5000 security personnel be some group like Blackwater?

 

[bluesc]

Would these 5000 security personnel be some group like Blackwater?

Sounds like it. That's their way around it.

 

[SL89]

Just re-positioning in the gulf.
Private contractors stay and the troops move just outside the boarder.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/w...an-gulf.html?_r=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

 

[Defiant]

I have been re-reading " The Rights Of Man" by Thomas Paine, and I came across this quote which I think fitting: "War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of money in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home: the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretense must be made for expenditures. In reviewing the history of the English government, its wars and taxes, an observer, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes".

 

[kylejack]

Ron cites this piece by an old left anarchist sometimes.

[...]

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties; the minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them. Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but often their agitation instead of converting, merely serves to stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Loyalty — or mystic devotion to the State — becomes the major imagined human value. Other values, such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.
[...]
http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/bourne.htm