[VogsHoock]

MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38744453

The last U.S. combat troops crossed the border into Kuwait on Thursday morning, bringing to a close the active combat phase of a 7½-year war that overthrew the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, forever defined the presidency of George W. Bush and left more than 4,400 American service members and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.

The final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., began entering Kuwait about 1:30 a.m. (6:30 p.m. Wednesday ET), carrying the last of the 14,000 U.S. combat forces in Iraq, said NBC’s Richard Engel, who has been traveling with the brigade as it moved out this week.

NBC News video showed the last Stryker vehicles rolling up to the gate. A guard pulled it back, and the vehicles drove through. The gate closed behind them.

P.J. Crowley, a spokesman for the State Department, told msnbc TV that while the departure is “an historic moment,” he said, it is not the end of the U.S. mission in Iraq.
“We are ending the war ... but we are not ending our work in Iraq,” he said. “We have a long-term commitment to Iraq.”

[SiM7W2zi]

Except that we still have 52,000 troops in Iraq. Except that the State Dept. will be hiring a whole slew of private contractors to provide security and that will cost a heck of a lot of money. Except that nobody in Iraq seems to think that the Iraqi security forces will be effective at all. Except, except, except...