Last Convoy Out Of Iraq Today

Think this will be remembered like the last helicopter out of Saigon?

Or will we be called back in soon enough.
Biggest war casualty wise for the US since Vietnam.

I remember Americans enjoying watching the last Soviet convoy leave Afghanistan, but now some wish they had stayed.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/stor ... csp=34news

Good story and some great video of the men and women making the crossing into Kuwait Sunday morning. The timeline set down by President Bush on 17 Nov 2008 was followed. President Obama had no choice but to stick to it, and since the Iraqi government did not want to renew the Status of Forces Agreement, we were required to be out of there by Dec 31, 2011.

Regardless, glad to see us out of there, big question now is what will really happen. IMO it will take some years before we really know what will happen to Iraq

Should we lets the troops actually reach America or just transfer them to the South Korean DMZ?

Don't we still have a sizable number of military advisors in Iraq?

Grady wrote: Don't we still have a sizable number of military advisors in Iraq?

And blackwater/mercenary types, and the largest American embassy in the world.

FredHayek wrote: And blackwater/mercenary types, and the largest American embassy in the world.

Mercenary is such an ugly word... They are contractors working on assignment to the largest US diplomatic mission in the world. Sure they have guns and access to all kinds of useful vehicles but they are only there to protect the State Department employees that work there. Oh yeah, there is a small contingency of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children there too but their job is... well, basically the same thing as the contractors...

It's MEANT to be an ugly word. They have done ugly things...like getting drunk and killing unarmed civilians. (I wonder why they have changed their corporate name three times?..) I don't care how many times they change it, it doesn't change who they are or what they do.

But it is nice to see the end of the unnecessary, Trillion-dollar war that the GOP didn't pay for, only to have them tell us they can't do a payroll tax-cut for the middle-class because it's not paid for.

LadyJazzer wrote: It's MEANT to be an ugly word. They have done ugly things...like getting drunk and killing unarmed civilians. (I wonder why they have changed their corporate name three times?..) I don't care how many times they change it, it doesn't change who they are or what they do.

But it is nice to see the end of the unnecessary, Trillion-dollar war that the GOP didn't pay for, only to have them tell us they can't do a payroll tax-cut for the middle-class because it's not paid for.

Well... it will be all over soon... and this will be one less excuse that President Obama and the socialists will have to blame the f*kup economy on. At some point they are going to have to take credit for something that is going on in this country... and when that happens... blammo.

So did the spending in Iraq go down or is the money just coming out of a different pot? What's the mean salary of an enlisted person in a war zone vs. the cost of contracting out the same services and some specialized skills through private companies? Sure there are a lot less private contractors than there are DoD personnel in Iraq; private security contractors don't work for free, in fact their services come at a premium because they hire the people who are at the top of their fields instead of training volunteers to do the work.

I don't know about now, but back when the war was happening many of these private contractors were able to offer prospective employees up to three years of tax exempt employment as an additional incentive (thanks to the US Gubment), the civilian version of hazardous duty pay. Making $60K to $120K a year tax free for three years in a row doing something you are good at can be hard to resist, especially given recent unemployment figures INCONUS.

What do our returning troops have to look forward to after they celebrate surviving their individual ordeals in Iraq? Record high unemployment figures, reductions in force across the DoD (thanks for fighting the war, now you're fired), and employers who are not motivated to hire new workers because of legislation like Obama care that will put all but the largest companies out of business. Never mind the Post Traumatic Stress disorder many will suffer from, now they will have to struggle for jobs and deal with the additional stress of not being able to provide for themselves and their families.

In the meanwhile why not keep US Gubment spending high and make the Gubment even mo'bigger? Stack on perpetual unemployment pay and keep collecting pay role taxes under a tax cut from the previous administration (but only for two months) as an obvious ploy to dupe those too stupid to understand the Gubment can't spend money it doesn't have. The answer is obvious, when you are out of money keep spending, the Treasury can always print more...