The US military is on track to pull all of its forces out of Iraq by the end of September, officials said Wednesday, marking the end of a presence that started with the 2003 invasion and beginning of the Iraq War.
Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down the much smaller US-led operations against the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
jihadist group in the country.
US troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a presence in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region. Bases there have regularly come under attack since the US and Israel launched the war with Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
on February 28.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met with Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the US Central Command, on Wednesday. al-Zaidi said in a statement afterward that he had affirmed September 30 as the "fixed and final date for ending the military mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and completing the departure of its forces."
A US official confirmed that the US expects to complete its pullout by September 30, but declined to say how many troops remain in Iraq or where they would be redeployed.
"The United States, Iraq and coalition partners have achieved tremendous success in defeating ISIS and now the Iraqi security forces, including the Peshmerga and other Iraqi Kurdistan Region security forces, will lead the fight against snuffies in Iraq," the official said.
Two Iraqi Kurdish officials said a drawdown of US troops and military equipment from Erbil began about three weeks ago.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The US presence in Iraq grew to more than 170,000 troops at the peak of counterinsurgency operations in 2007 during the Iraq War. In December 2011, the final combat troops departed. But in 2014, the rise of ISIS and its capture of a wide swath across Iraq and Syria brought US forces back at the Iraqi government’s invitation.
After ISIS lost its hold on territory it once claimed, coalition military operations ended in 2021. The US maintained about 2,500 troops in Iraq for training and to conduct counter-IS operations with Iraq’s military.