"In Baghdad, Panetta Leads Uneasy Moment of Closure" by THOM SHANKER, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ROBERT F. WORTH, December 15, 2011
BAGHDAD — Almost nine years after the first American tanks began massing on the Iraq border, the Pentagon declared an official end to its mission here, closing a troubled conflict that helped reshape American politics and left a bitter legacy of anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world.
If it's official it must be a lie.
As Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta marked the occasion with a speech in a fortified concrete courtyard at the Baghdad airport, helicopters hovered above, underscoring the challenges facing a country where insurgents continue to attack American soldiers and where militants with Al Qaeda still regularly carry out devastating attacks against civilians.
But we've won (sigh).
“Let me be clear: Iraq will be tested in the days ahead — by terrorism, and by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues, by the demands of democracy itself,” Mr. Panetta said. “Challenges remain, but the U.S. will be there to stand by the Iraqi people as they navigate those challenges to build a stronger and more prosperous nation.”
Those words sounded an uncertain trumpet for a war that was begun in 2003 to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that proved illusory.
No, you lead liar and enabler; they WERE NEVER THERE, and PEOPLE LIKE ME KNEW THAT BEFORE the WAR -- as did the WAR CRIMINAL GOVERNMENT and its MOUTHPIECE MEDIA here!!!
The conflict was also cast as an effort to bring democracy to the Middle East — another pretext that rang hollow during Iraq’s worst sectarian bloodletting, and that hampered Washington’s efforts in the past year to support the peaceful protesters of the Arab Spring.
Sounds like my morning paper.
The American withdrawal opens a new chapter for Iraq, a nation forged less than a century ago by British colonialists and tortured ever since by rebellions, wars and brutal dictatorship. Long a borderland between Persian and Arab empires, the country still struggles to balance the ambitions of Iran, the powerful theocratic neighbor whose nuclear program has become a profound concern to the United States and its allies.
They aren't even done with one war and it's already on to the next one!
For Americans, the ceremony on Thursday marked an uneasy moment of closure, with no clear sense of what has been won and lost....
F*** you, NYT!
Although Thursday’s ceremony represented the official end of the war, the military still has two bases in Iraq and roughly 4,000 troops, including several hundred who attended the ceremony.
Those troops that remain are still being attacked daily, mainly by artillery or mortar fire on the bases, and roadside bombs aimed at convoys heading south toward Kuwait.
Even after the last two bases are closed and the final American combat troops withdraw from Iraq by Dec. 31, a few hundred military personnel and Pentagon civilians will remain, working within the American Embassy as part of an Office of Security Cooperation to assist in arms sales and training to the Iraqis.
Then the OCCUPATION HASN'T REALLY ENDED, has it?
But negotiations could resume next year on whether additional American military personnel can return to assist their Iraqi counterparts further.
Related: Occupation Iraq: Over and Out
NOT SO FAST, 'eh?
But hey, what is ONE MORE DISTORTION, OBFUSCATION, or LIE in a PAPER FULL OF 'EM?
Iraq’s military has critical weaknesses in a number of areas, from air defenses to basic logistical tasks like moving food and fuel and servicing the armored vehicles it is inheriting from the Americans and the jets it is buying. There are shortfalls in military engineers, artillery and intelligence....
In other words, WE AIN'T REALLY LEAVIN'!!!!
--more--"
Remember this one?
"Former POW Jessica Lynch finishing teaching degree" by Vicki Smith Associated Press / December 14, 2011
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.—Jessica Lynch was just 19 when the world first saw her -- a broken, blond soldier caught on combat video in Iraq, her face wearing something between a grimace and a grin.
The Army supply clerk was being carried on a stretcher after nine days as a prisoner of war. She had been captured along with five others after the 507th Maintenance Company took a wrong turn and came under attack in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003. Eleven of her fellow soldiers died.
Lynch had joined the Army at 18 to earn money for college and become a school teacher. This Friday, at 28, she completes that mission.
She'll spend Thursday finishing her training as a student teacher at the same elementary school she attended in sparsely populated Wirt County. Then, on badly damaged legs and a right foot that still pains her, she'll walk across a stage Friday evening and get her education degree from West Virginia University at Parkersburg.
All because of lies!
"It's tough to walk, but I look at it as, `At least I'm walking,'" she says. "At least I have my legs. They may not work. I have no feeling in the left one. But it's attached, at least. ... At least I'm alive."
Nearly 4,500 Americans died and some 32,000 were wounded during the war in Iraq, winding down this month as the last American troops withdraw. The first woman lost was Lynch's friend and fellow soldier, 23-year-old Army Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa of Arizona, killed in the convoy attack.
"Knowing she died right beside me and that could fairly well have been me brings a whole new perspective," Lynch said. "You're just thankful for what you've been given, even if it's not what you wanted."
Today, Lynch and longtime boyfriend Wes Robinson are parents to 5-year-old Dakota, whose name honors her fallen American Indian friend. Marriage, she says, is in the plan, but there's no rush. What matters is the comfort she finds in her family. They are there when she's overcome by stress or shaken by the nightmares that still sometimes come.
"By looking at me through a picture, you'd never know anything is wrong," she said. "I fake it. But my family, my friends ... they know when I'm really in pain."
And the MOUTHPIECE MEDIA RAN WITH IT!!!!!!!
To make her seem more heroic and rally public support for the war, the military claimed she'd gone down firing -- when, in fact, her rifle had jammed. She wrote a book, "I Am A Soldier, Too," with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg, and has repeatedly worked to set the record straight.
"The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes," she told Congress in 2007, "and they don't need to be told elaborate lies."
That's why newspapers are self-imploding and the industry is dying.
And the lies cost her. For a long time, she got hate mail. Some said she'd done nothing to deserve the attention or the title of hero. She once told Glamour magazine she felt like "the most hated person in America."
Why? Because SHE TOLD the TRUTH, as opposed to the LYING MILITARY and its MOUTHPIECE MEDIA!!!??
Every now and then, after a high-profile appearance, a hateful missive still arrives.
"They say things like, `Who do you think you are? That was so eight years ago,'" Lynch said. "I just don't respond. It just doesn't bother me anymore. It used to, because I couldn't understand why people were hating me. I was just a soldier like the 100,000 others over there."
Literally and figuratively, she said, she now has a stronger backbone. "I just let things roll off."
Lynch said she'll take a semester off to travel and spend time with Dakota before the child starts school. Lynch hopes to start work soon on a master's degree in communications.
She'll also continue her speaking engagements with children and with veterans' groups. At those events, without fail, the most common question is whether she was shot.
"I can't answer because I don't even know myself," she says. "There's never been actual proof."
The crash of her Humvee is believed to have caused her injuries, which also included spinal fractures, nerve damage and a shattered right arm.
Sometimes Lynch is paid for her appearances. Often, she asks the audience to donate to Jessi's Pals, a venture she launched to provide blankets and stuffed animals to patients at WVU Children's Hospital.
She has become what a soldier should be.
Awkward questions aside, she thrives on the interaction of those three to five lectures a month. Four years ago, Lynch said she wanted to bow out of the spotlight and have a normal life. But now, attention is normal.
Telling the truth does that to a person (smile).
She is often recognized. Sometimes she's caught with a mouthful of food as people speak to her and try to touch her. She is no longer annoyed. She embraces it. She says hello and introduces herself to people who know her face but can't quite place it.
"Honestly, it does surprise me that so many people still are familiar with the story. I sometimes get taken aback when I hear people talking about it because it's like reading it in a book," Lynch said. "I forget, `That's me.'"
If her fame has one benefit, it's the reminder that people are still thinking about U.S. troops, at home and overseas.
"And that's good," Lynch said, "because they still need our prayers just like they did nine or 10 years ago."
Yes, some troops have been monsters; however, it never was their fault that they were lied into war -- especially when so many Americans believed the lies at the time.
Thanks, AmeriKan media!
--more--"
I consider them responsible for each and every death and wounded, including unmentioned Iraqis.
"Glad it’s over, but pain lingers" by Amanda Cedrone Globe Correspondent / December 16, 2011
Families from Massachusetts who lost loved ones in the Iraq war have mixed feelings about its official end, which US military officials announced today.
The state Executive Office of Health and Human Services for the state lists at least 93 soldiers who lived in, or have family in Massachusetts that died in the line of duty.
Matthew Gallagher is the most recently recorded Massachusetts soldier to die in Iraq, according to Jennifer Kritz, spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services....
Pauline Roberge, who lost her son Jonathan, in February 2009, is glad the war is over but struggles with her son's death.
"It's a nightmare that we live," she said. "It's hard to feel happy when we know we never should have been there."
And for that I blame the agenda-pushing, war-promoting, Zionist AmeriKan media -- and always will.
--NOMORE--"
The Globe buried the Haditha massacre. Good luck finding it.
Update: Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq
Source: Secret Military Documents, Straight From an Iraqi Junkyard
Via: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
