I’ve truly been surprised at how little attention has been paid to President Obama’s announcement that the Iraq War would be ended and almost all troops home by the end of this year.
Maybe people are just numb….
I’m not.
This is a very big deal. Countless lives were destroyed or changed forever by George Bush’s illegal and immoral war built on lies. After 8 long years, the end is in sight and we should all be thanking President Obama for keeping his promise to end this war.
Basically, all these people were killed and injured and lives destroyed because Saddam Hussein threatened Daddy Bush and Junior got his faux Texas panties in a wad….and lied to Congress and fed false information to the Press-both of whom willingly accepted it without question.
This is a sorry chapter in our history and I’m glad to see it closed. I’m also grateful to President Obama for ending this war of choice and bringing the troops home.
From ThinkProgress.org:
Here are some relevant numbers:
8 years, 260 days since Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program
8 years, 215 days since the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq
8 years, 175 days since President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln
4,479 U.S. military fatalities
30,182 U.S. military injuries
468 contractor fatalities
103,142 – 112,708 documented civilian deaths
2.8 million internally displaced Iraqis
$806 billion in federal funding for the Iraq War through FY2011
$3 – $5 trillion in total economic cost to the United States of the Iraq war according to economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes
$60 billion in U.S. expenditures lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001
0 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq
via Iraq By The Numbers: The World’s Costliest Cakewalk | ThinkProgress.
Lost in the 21st Century 
Wow. I knew many of those numbers (approximately, at least). But it is stunning to see them listed like that. Regarding Obama’s withdrawl announcement, I’ve seen posts on Twitter, and I’ve heard pundits complaining about it (imagine that), but I have not seen any of the analysis it deserves in the mainstream press. Maybe they’re just sad that they’ll have that much less fodder for stories & churn during slow new periods.
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Just a note: in the past few days I’ve seen and heard some coverage and analysis on PBS’s “Newshour,” on NPR, and BBC, but those are the only mainstream journalism outlets I’ve taken in during that time so I don’t have an accurate impression of who else may be covering the announcement in depth.
I think President Obama should have ordered the pull out from Iraq within the first year of his term in office (and certainly should’ve closed the Guantanamo Bay prison), but at least the futile debacle is apparently, truly coming to an end very soon. But let’s not forget that the Obama administration had wanted to keep, I believe, a few thousand American “support and training” troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, even after the main pullout, but the U.S. and Iraq couldn’t agree on legal immunity policies for all remaining US-related personnel in the country going forward, so Obama basically decided to wrap it all up by the end of the year.
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