As some of you may have noticed recently,Iraq war news in American media has been sprucing up for a little bit more than just suicide car bombings and American war deaths.Last week President Barack Obama gave the executive order to begin the first exits of military combat divisions out of Iraq and has promised that the "mission" in Iraq will officially end today with all U.S.personell being out of the country by 2011.With this news,many military troops and their families,weary of the constant deployments overseas,apllaude the plan to end one of the costliest U.S. wars since WW2.But as our country's military operations roll to an end there several questions have been raised about the aftermath of this drastic move such as,will the Iraq government be able to keep the country together and stablized with the amount of unrest currently going on and without allied help?,what happens to U.S. servicemembers leaving Iraq?will they be sent home or redeployed to Afghanistan or other military base regions abroad?and the most prevalent.........Can the U.S. claim victory in Iraq?

Well I suppose that depends on how you look at the spectrum.On the one hand if you look at inflicted casualty counts then seeing that the U.S. and its allies have killed more than 50000 known terrorist insurgents vs 4000 casulties inflicted on our forces then yes.

But if you go deeper into the facts that:

A.No Weapons of mass destruction have been found nor used inside Iraq borders since the 2003 conflict began.

B.The insurgent movement has not been neutralized.

C.The insurgents continue to resist and cause mayhem on a daily basis

D.The Iraqi government and military is far from being capable of handling the insurgency and civil war between Shiite and Sunni factions on its own and will likely experience a situation similar to the one the Mexican government is going through with criminals after the athoritiy figures of the country instead of vice versa.

Then you would come to conclude that the answer would be unequivically no,the allies have not accomplished the mission from an objective assessment at all.

While I do feel that President Obama is making the right decision by keeping his promise to bring our troops home from a war that should have never been started in the first place,I think its fair to say that with the level of goal inconsistency,allied casualty figures and anti war sentiment,the "Iraq War"(considered a sub-operation of the larger war on terrorism) is indeed the modern day Vietnam.

In my opinion we lost more than just the war itself but the morale of our troops and the respect of the world around us.And now the question is,how do we tell this story in the history books?

Very good issue to be raised Pete and No I dont think the United States government came anywhere near accomplishing the goals it set out to achieve.For one thing they failed epically to prove that Sadaam's government had still obtained or planned to use WMD's after the first Gulf war (which as we already know was the purpose excuse for going into Iraq anyway),the U.S. certainly hasnt gained any freinds in the Arab world by doing so,just more enemies with more motivation to have sentiment towards us and most importantly they have been unable to halt the insurgency that continues to wreeck lives and progress in Iraq at record levels on a day to day basis.Now that Obama is finally making good on his promise to begin with drawal of our troops the question is.........now what?Where do they go to next?Afghanistan?Kuwait?South Korea?......what potential war zone will our forces stand between next on wait for a call to the next conflict that has nothing hardly at all to do with the protection of our nation lol?There ultimatley is noone to blame for the Iraq war but Bush(whom I agree with some othe rpeople,should be brought up on charges at the International War Crimes Tribunal lmao).He went in on falsified information comign from the CIA,his closest advisors and Sadaams adversaries.The entire point of that war was to free up the nations oil supply so when Saudi Arabia runs out we can suck them dry next and to halt the money being spent yearly(billions) by U.S. Air Forces to patrol the "No Fly Zone" over the country.

It is really sad the waste of human life on both the American and Iraqi side for pretty much nothing...especially not all the war was cracked up to be for.

I have a brother in law over there right now,so for me this strikes a chord.I blame all the political hoopla bullshit carried on from the last idiot in office(Tony Blair) for what our military has become over there in Iraq in recent years.......walking targets for terrorists.

They dont have the proper armor or vehicles and arent over there for the right reasons.And they need to stop toying get some REAL amounts of troops on the ground in Afghanistan and crush those Taliban assholes to the point where they go diving back into their holes like they did in 02'.

Here in Germany it is known as "The War that should have never been fought".But then again our society would be more than a bit hipocritical if we focused all of our criticism on the American government about such issues given our unfortunete past.

Well..when you think on it objectively both yes and no.

The United States government fronted(as we all know) that it was Chemical Weapons that they were worried about falling into the hands of Islamists though their real goal was to rid of Saddaam and his two sons so they could be replaced with a more agreeable dictatorship.And that is exactly what happened.

On the other hand the U.S. wanted to come off as the "freedom fighters" and salvationists of the middleeast.That certainly was not accomplished.

Some people also make the argument that oil played a factor,but I dont know if it did or not because the Americans havent been so hasty to touch the desert juice from there after 7 years.Maybe they are scared of their hainous plot all along actually getting found out...maybe.

Well I mean we stopped terrorism didnt we?