Posted on 12/17/2011 9:01:09 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
(CNN) -- In a final tactical road march, the last U.S. troops in Iraq crossed the border into Kuwait on Sunday morning, ending almost nine years of a deadly and divisive war.
About 500 Fort Hood, Texas-based soldiers and 110 military vehicles made the journey south from Camp Adder, near Nasiriya, to the Khabari border crossing, from where they will head to Camp Virginia in Kuwait before flying home.
They were the last soldiers in what amounted to the largest U.S. troop drawdown since the war in Vietnam.
Brigade Commander Col. Doug Crissman said his soldiers used the cover of night for security and timed the troop movements so as to avoid a traffic jam on the main north-south highway, which the Americans called Main Supply Route Tampa.
Staff Sgt. Daniel Gaumer, 37, recalled his first tour of Iraq, in August 2003, when he drove in on this very same road. He had never been in a combat zone before.
He was driving an unarmored Humvee -- something that is unimaginable now. He was frightened.
There was not a lot of traffic at that time, he recalled. He remembered a lot of cheering by Iraqis, even though the situation was tense.
Sunday morning, the air was decidedly different.
"It's pretty historic," he said about the drive south, hoping he will not ever have to come back through this unforgiving desert again.
"The biggest thing about going home is just that it's home," he said. "It's civilization as I know it -- the Western world, not sand and dust and the occasional rain here and there."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Job well done, troops! Welcome home.
Has anyone made a poster yet with Dingy Reid’s scowling image and the quote about “the war is lost”?? Or posters of Obama’s and Hillary’s statements ridiculing the Bush admin., Hillary viciously riduculing General David Petraeus, etc.?
Regardless of debates about how and why we got there, the people who tried to make us accept defeat should have it rubbed in their faces forever.
They were saying that while we were there.
Finally.
We never should have been there in the first place. Unfortunately, pulling the troops out of Iraq is going to work to the advantage of Obama, as he is going to be able to say that he fulfilled a campaign promise while succeeding in taking out bin Laden.
Most FReepers don’t realize how much Millennials hated Bush for starting the Iraq War. Obama won over 60 percent of the Millennial vote in 2008. Millennials like Ron Paul because of his opposition to the Iraq War.
Countdown to Iraq becoming Irans bitch starts now.
“We never should have been there in the first place.”
I couldn’t imagine what our government would tell the families of dead servicemen as to what their loved ones died for (I mean beyond the rhetoric & nonsense).
IF we go back, it should be at 50,000 feet dropping the biggest MOABs this world has ever seen. There is no cause, condition, state of emergency in IRAQ that could ever justify having one of our soldiers being killed by ungrateful Muslims.
The Iraq disaster caused enormous losses in 2006 and 2008, across the board.
In small town America, with the all-volunteer force, many towns lost truly irreplaceable heroes - teachers, police chiefs, firefighters, husbands, brothers, sons - for nothing.
The ramifications of this waste will be with us for many years.
Nothing was accomplished in Iraq that could not have been done by Christmas 2003.
Sorry, but when you pick up a newspaper here in the Middle East it reads that the USA was "defeated!" Obama gets the pleasure of having that hang around his neck!
I would venture to say they will have a "15 DECEMBER ROAD" in every large city across Iraq to celebrate the day the infidels were "kicked out" of Iraq.
No joke.
CC
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