War ends, warts torment - Home truths hit America as Iraq mission concludes!Uncertainty in Iraq as US army ends mission Nation faces severe challenges, says Panetta

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War ends, warts torment - Home truths hit America as Iraq mission concludes K.P. NAYAR Washington, Dec. 15: "Your nation is deeply indebted to you." With these words of tribute to more than a million American military personnel who served in Iraq during nearly nine years since President George W. Bush ordered an invasion of Baghdad, US defence secretary Leon Panetta today ended one of the most controversial offensive missions in human history. The low-key, sombre ceremony outside Baghdad airport was in line with the current mood in America, but for hundreds of thousands of military families watching the conclusion of the Bush-era armed aggression, Panetta's words had a touch of unreality at best, hypocrisy at worst. As the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, was giving the final touches to today's historic end to a war that may come to define the course of this millennium, families of military personnel being praised by Panetta have been shocked by revelations here that incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops were disrespectfully dumped in landfills instead of being given a decent burial. A depressed mood among those who have served in two wars started by Bush, brought on by the huge scandal, has been compounded by statistics from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans here that "nearly one-fifth of the homeless population are veterans" in the US, although ex-servicemen account for only eight per cent of the total population. The Coalition says about 56 per cent of homeless veterans are either black or Hispanic, vastly disproportionate in number to their share of 12.8 per cent and 15.4 per cent respectively of the American population. The Obama administration has promised to end homelessness among veterans by 2015 and made it a top priority. Two days ago, it announced that such homelessness had been reduced by almost 12 per cent in one year from January 2010. "Our progress in the fight against homelessness has been significant, but our work is not complete until no veteran has to sleep on the street," said President Barack Obama's handpicked secretary of veterans affairs, Eric Shinseki, who was eased out by Bush as army chief of staff three months after the attack on Baghdad over disagreements on Iraq war strategy. Neither Bush nor his defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld attended his farewell. Shinseki was the first four-star general of Asian descent in the US. Unmindful of such a depressing environment, Panetta soldiered on in Baghdad today, telling US troops set to leave for home in a few days that "no words, no ceremony can provide full tribute to the sacrifices that have brought this day to pass". He added that "your dream of an independent and sovereign Iraq is now a reality" even if it was at a massive cost to Americans, many of whom have lost their own independence as members of society as the price of Bush-era policies, of which the attack on Iraq will be judged by future generations as probably the worst decision. The practice of dumping the mortal remains of soldiers, without informing their survivors, was first revealed by The Washington Post last month. Lt Gen. Darrell Jones, the deputy chief for personnel, US Air Force, told the Post at that time that the dumping job was given to a private military contractor. Jones compared the practice to the disposal of medical waste. Outrage over the practice has since grown and last week a Congressional panel expanded its investigations to cover all military burial practices during the last decade. At the centre of the scandal is an Air Force Base at Dover, which is the main arrival base for dead soldiers who are brought back from abroad. The Bush administration had banned media coverage of arriving coffins during the Iraq invasion and afterwards, lest it add to an anti-war mood in the country and created Vietnam-era type protests over US deaths. The Pentagon has said the practice of dumping the remains of soldiers has been stopped but Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters last week that Panetta "is comfortable with the way the air force has handled this". The Pentagon does not plan to tell military families about whose remains were dumped in a landfill. Jones told the Post that "to open up that wound, that would be cruel". US forces are leaving Iraq at a time of drastic cuts in the Pentagon's budget, another factor spreading gloom within the military and among conglomerates that have thrived on the massive defence spending that came with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US will continue to remain the paramount military power in the world in spite of these cuts, but defence employment is expected to decline, adding to the already high general unemployment here. An unexpected development amidst these setbacks is the army's decision to induct its first Hindu chaplain. Capt. Pratima Dharm, born in India, who has a masters in psychology and theology, has recently joined the National Naval Medical Center here to offer Hindu services and yoga to wounded soldiers as part of clinical pastoral care.

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• HC acquits 4 in '07 carnage    • Word of caution on street power   • A week on, a 14-year lesson   • Hotelier slur on PC, Delhi U-turn after uproar   • Girl hugs a dad, parts with another   • War ends, warts torment   • Boulder lifeline, echo of death   • Talks on at HAL for copter return   • Jan. 4 poll for Karbi council  Uncertainty in Iraq as US army ends mission  Nation faces severe challenges, says Panetta Uncertainty in Iraq as US army ends mission  Nation faces severe challenges, says Panetta THOM SHANKER AND MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT Soldiers carry Iraqi and American flags during a ceremony marking the end of US military engagement at a fortified concrete courtyard in Baghdad airport on Thursday. (Reuters) Baghdad, Dec. 15: The US military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq today even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power. In a fortified concrete courtyard at the airport in Baghdad, US defence secretary Leon E. Panetta thanked the more than one million American service members who have served in Iraq for "the remarkable progress" made over the past nine years but acknowledged the severe challenges that face the struggling democracy. "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," Panetta said. "Challenges remain, but the US will be there to stand by the Iraqi people as they navigate those challenges to build a stronger and more prosperous nation." The tenor of the farewell ceremony, officially called "Casing the Colours", was likely to sound an uncertain trumpet for a war that was launched to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction it did not have and now ends without the sizeable, enduring American military presence for which many officers had hoped. The tone of the string of ceremonies culminating with the final withdrawal event today has been understated in keeping with an administration that campaigned to end an unpopular war it inherited. Although the ceremony today marked the end of the war, the military still has two bases in Iraq and roughly 4,000 troops, including several hundred that attended the ceremony. At the height of the war in 2007 there were 505 bases and over 150,000 troops. According to military officials, the remaining troops are still being attacked on a daily basis, mainly by indirect fire attacks on the bases and road side bomb explosions against convoys heading south through Iraq to bases in Kuwait. Even after the last two bases are closed and the final American combat troops withdraw from Iraq by December 31 under rules of an agreement with the Baghdad government, 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. But negotiations could resume next year on whether additional American military personnel can return to further assist their Iraqi counterparts. Senior American military officers have made no secret that they see key gaps in Iraq's ability to defend its sovereign soil and even to secure its oil platforms offshore in the Persian Gulf. Air defences are seen as a critical gap in Iraqi capabilities, but American military officers also see significant shortcomings in Iraq's ability to sustain a military, whether moving food and fuel or servicing the armoured vehicles it is inheriting from Americans or the jet-fighters it is buying, and has shortfalls in military engineers, artillery and intelligence, as well. The tenuous security atmosphere in Iraq was underscored by helicopters that hovered over the ceremony, scanning the ground for rocket attacks. Although there is far less violence across Iraq than at the height of the sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, but there are bombings on a nearly daily basis and Americans remain a target of Shia militants. During a 45-minute ceremony that ended the military mission, Panetta acknowledged that "the cost was high — in blood and treasure of the United States, and also for the Iraqi people. But those lives have not been lost in vain — they gave birth to an independent, free and sovereign Iraq". The war was launched by the Bush administration in March 2003 on arguments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al Qaida that might grow to an alliance threatening the US with a mass-casualty terror attack. As the absence of stockpiles of unconventional weapons proved a humiliation for the administration and the intelligence community, the war effort was reframed as being about bringing democracy to West Asia. And, indeed, there was euphoria among many Iraqis at an American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. But the support soon soured amid a growing sense of heavy-handed occupation fuelled by the unleashing of bloody sectarian and religious rivalries. The American presence also proved a magnet for militant fighters and an al Qaida-affiliated group took root among the Sunni population here. While the terror organisation had been rendered ineffective by a punishing series of Special Operations raids that decapitated the organisation, intelligence specialists fear that it is in resurgence. The American military presence here, viewed as an occupation across the Muslim world, also hampered Washington's ability to cast a narrative from the US in support of the Arab Spring uprisings this year. Even handing bases over to the Iraqi government over recent months proved vexing for the military. NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE U.S. Marks End to 9-Year War, Leaving an Uncertain Iraq Andrea Bruce for The New York Times American forces, arriving in Kuwait in one of the last convoys out of Iraq, took the same highway they came in on in 2003. By TIM ARANGO Published: December 15, 2011 RECOMMEND TWITTER LINKEDIN SIGN IN TO E-MAIL PRINT SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS SHARE BAGHDAD — At a crowded market in the city center here, the flotsam of the war is for sale. Ripped Fuel workout supplement. Ready-to-eat meals, macaroni and cheese "Mexican style." Pistol holsters. Nothing seems off limits to the merchants out for a quick dinar, not even a bottle of prescription pills from a pharmacy in Waco, Tex., probably tossed out by a departing soldier. Multimedia TimesCast | December 15, 2011 Notes from the front lines. What Iraqis Think of the American Withdrawal: Mosul and Basra December 15, 2011 6:25pm A Withdrawal Ceremony in Iraq, Observed by Few Iraqis December 15, 2011 2:00pm New Jersey Help Line for Troops Expands to Nationwide Program December 15, 2011 Whatever Happened to ... Falluja December 14, 2011 Go to At War » Follow At War on Twitter » Related In Baghdad, Panetta Leads Uneasy Moment of Closure(December 16, 2011) Times Topic: Iraq Related in Opinion Op-Ed Contributor: In Iraq, Abandoning Our Friends(December 16, 2011) Op-Ed Contributor: An Unstable, Divided Land (December 16, 2011) Editorial: A Formal End(December 16, 2011) Connect With Us on Twitter Follow@nytimesworldfor international breaking news and headlines. Enlarge This Image Michael Kamber for The New York Times A soldier at a Baghdad market, the scene of bloody attacks in the past. Merchants now sell items left behind by departing soldiers. The concrete blast walls that shielded the shopping stalls have lately come down. Since then, three explosions have struck the market, killing several people. "This will be an easy target for car bombs," said Muhammad Ali, a merchant who lost two brothers during the cruelest times of the conflict. "People will die here." After nearly nine years, about 4,500 American fatalities and $1 trillion, America's war in Iraq is about to end. Officials marked the finish on Thursday with a modest ceremony at the airport days before the last troops take the southern highway to Kuwait, going out as they came in, to conclude the United States' most ambitious and bloodiest military campaign since Vietnam. For the United States, the war leaves an uncertain legacy as Americans weigh what may have been accomplished against the price paid, with so many dead and wounded. The Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was vanquished, but the failure to find illicit weapons undermined the original rationale, leaving a bitter taste as casualties mounted. The lengthy conflict and repeated deployments strained the country and its resources, raising questions about America's willingness to undertake future wars on such a grand scale. Iraqis will be left with a country that is not exactly at war, and not exactly at peace. It has improved in many ways since the 2007 troop "surge," but it is still a shattered country marred by violence and political dysfunction, a land defined on sectarian lines whose future, for better or worse, is now in the hands of its people. "It is the end for the Americans only," Emad Risn, an Iraqi columnist, recently wrote in Assabah al-Jadeed, a government-financed newspaper. "Nobody knows if the war will end for Iraqis, too." Iraq will now be on its own both to find its place in a region upended by revolutions and to manage its rivalry withIran, which will look to expand its influence culturally and economically in the power vacuum left by the United States military. While American officials worry about the close political ties between Iraq's Shiite leadership and Iran, the picture at the grass-roots level is more nuanced. Iraqis complain about shoddy Iranian consumer goods — they frequently mention low-quality yogurts and cheeses — and the menacing role of Iranian-backed militias, which this year killed many American soldiers. Failed Reconciliation The Iranian rivalry frequently plays out in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where Iraq's religious authorities are based. Iran, which like Iraq is majority Shiite, recently installed one of its leading clerics in Najaf, raising worries that Iran is trying to spread its brand of clerical rule to Iraq. Meanwhile, Moktada al-Sadr, an anti-American cleric with very close ties to Iran, has recently said that with the military withdrawal, American diplomats are now fair game for his militiamen. Iraq faces a multitude of vexing problems the Americans tried and failed to resolve, from how to divide the country's oil wealth to sectarian reconciliation to the establishment of an impartial justice system. A longstanding dispute festers in the north over how to share power in Kirkuk between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, an ominous harbinger for power struggles that may ensue in a post-America Iraq. A recent deal between Exxon Mobil and the Kurdistan government in the north has been deemed illegal by Baghdad in the absence of procedures for sharing the country's oil resources. "We are in a standstill and things are paralyzed," said Adel Abdul Mahdi, a prominent Shiite politician and former vice president of Iraq, describing the process of political reconciliation among Iraq's three main factions, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. "We are going from bad to worse." A surprising number of Iraqis refuse to believe that the Americans are really leaving, the effect of a conspiratorial mind-set developed over years living under the violent and repressive dictatorship of Mr. Hussein, and a view of history informed by the Crusades, colonialism and other perceived injustices at the hands of the West. 1  2  3  NEXT PAGE » Reporting was contributed by Jack Healy, Michael S. Schmidt, Andrew E. Kramer, Duraid Adnan, Omar al-Jawoshy and an employee of The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/world/middleeast/end-for-us-begins-period-of-uncertainty-for-iraqis.html Enlarge this image Pullout 'with honour' to be determined as Iraq faces future without Americans PAUL KORING WASHINGTON— From Friday's Globe and Mail Published Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 9:39PM EST Last updated Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 10:10PM EST 25 comments Email Print/License Decrease text sizeIncrease text size The last American combat troops are headed home, leaving Iraq "with honour and with their heads held high," Barack Obama contends. But it may take decades before history judges whether the President's pullout from a war that toppled a tyrant but spun out of control into years of chaotic, bloody insurgency will be seen as an exit with honour or a cut and run. MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY Baghdad ceremony marks end of U.S. war in Iraq Obama marks end of Iraq war with salute to returning U.S. troops A celebrity of war, Jessica Lynch moves on VIDEO Retrospective of Iraq war VIDEO It's over: U.S. war formally ends VIDEO U.S. Forces-Iraq Flag Retired VIDEO Obama, al-Maliki open 'new chapter' in Iraq Mr. Obama opts for the upside. "Iraq is not a perfect place, but we are leaving a sovereign, stable and self-reliant country with a representative government elected by its people," he said. With oil riches powering a growing Iraqi economy, a fractious but functioning democracy seems a hopeful possibility. Perhaps Baghdad will again be the sophisticated hub of learning, culture and Arab dynamism. But far darker outcomes remain equally possible. In those scenarios, Iraq returns to bloody sectarian strife, abandoned by its liberators and at the mercy of meddling Iran. Or it implodes into civil war, pitting Kurds against Arabs and Shiites against Sunnis in a conflict that could spread. Mr. Obama stopped well short of declaring victory. He avoided the euphoric and foolish "Mission Accomplished" stunt staged by his predecessor in the heady weeks of military triumph in 2003 that preceded years of bloody struggle. But even Mr. Obama's more carefully chosen words have a worrisome echo. Nearly four decades earlier, another president, Richard Nixon, proclaimed "peace with honour," to end another unpopular, decade-long nightmare. That war, in Vietnam, tore America apart even as it set Southeast Asia on fire. It was a phase that would haunt America. By comparison, the Iraq war, while deeply divisive, left most American families untouched. In the all-volunteer army era, only a minority of families even know someone in uniform, let alone live with the daily fear that a family member will be killed overseas. The two wars differ in many ways. But both defined their decade and the fate of presidents. In Vietnam, "peace with honour" was ephemeral. In chaotic scenes that still sear the American psyche, helicopters plucked desperate diplomats from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and America's Southeast Asian military misadventure ended in disgrace. If, as critics believe, Mr. Obama has let the political expediency of making good on a campaign promise trump America's strategic interests, and Iraq spirals into violence or, worse, falls under the Shia sway of Iran's ruling mullahs, then there may be future flights of helicopters into ignominy. Mr. Obama has hardly washed his hands of Iraq. The pullout came only because Iraq wouldn't grant immunity to the tens of thousands of troops Washington wanted to leave behind as "trainers" and "advisers." Even so, Mr. Obama has pledged to back Iraq's shaky democracy. Washington has set aside $2.3-billion just to run its Baghdad embassy next year – by far the world's largest and including a battalions of Marines and multiple helicopter-landing zones, should they be needed. A war that became nightmarishly complex began with the simple premise: Saddam Hussein defied demands that he give up weapons of mass destruction and posed a grave threat to the United States, Mr. Bush said. Mr. Hussein called his bluff. So, already at war in Afghanistan, Mr. Bush launched a second front, with "shock and awe" to oust the Iraqi dictator. In a few short weeks, Mr. Hussein fled and Iraq's military collapsed. But there were far too few American troops to prevent Iraq from spiralling into chaos. Within months it became starkly and embarrassingly evident that there were no chemical, biological or nuclear arsenals, that the whole premise of the war was at best flawed, at worst a lie. Sectarian strife verged on civil war. Tens of thousands of Iraqis died in each of the years that followed until 2007 when, belatedly, a surge of additional U.S. forces established a modicum of order, if not peace. SINGLE PAGE 1 2 NEXT PAGE MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY U.S. troops leaving Iraq with 'heads held high,' Obama says Obama gets his 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq – maybe http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pullout-with-honour-to-be-determined-as-iraq-faces-future-without-americans/article2273295/ Full coverage US Marks End to 9-Year War, Leaving an Uncertain Iraq New York Times - ‎2 hours ago‎ American forces, arriving in Kuwait in one of the last convoys out of Iraq, took the same highway they came in on in 2003. By TIM ARANGO BAGHDAD — At a crowded market in the city center here, the flotsam of the war is for sale. ... US Closes Its Mission on Uncertain Note Wall Street Journal - ‎27 minutes ago‎ By JULIAN E. 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Pullout 'with honour' to be determined as Iraq faces future without Americans Globe and Mail - ‎2 hours ago‎ The last American combat troops are headed home, leaving Iraq "with honour and with their heads held high," Barack Obama contends. But it may take decades before history judges whether the President's pullout from a war that toppled a tyrant but spun ... Iraqi VIPs snub US farewell The Australian - ‎2 hours ago‎ Yesterday, as the US formally declared at an official ceremony in Baghdad that its most controversial war had ended, the American Army had to draft in extra troops to fill seats after Iraqi dignitaries failed to attend. ... US formally ends Iraq war with little fanfare IBNLive.com - ‎1 hour ago‎ AP Baghdad: Nearly nine years after American troops stormed across the Iraq border in a blaze of shock and awe, US officials quietly ended the bloody and bitterly divisive conflict in Baghdad on Thursday, but the debate over whether it was worth the ... Iraq war 'not in vain,' Panetta says at withdrawal ceremony Los Angeles Times - ‎3 hours ago‎ By David S. Cloud and David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times After nearly nine years of war, the loss of more than 100000 lives and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, the US military mission in Iraq has formally ended. But violence continues to roil the ... Obama hails 'extraordinary' U.S. achievement in Iraq eTaiwan News - ‎2 hours ago‎ President Barack Obama">Obama on Wednesday honored America's nearly nine years of "bleeding and building" in Iraq, hailing the "extraordinary achievement" of a war he once branded "dumb." "Welcome home, welcome home," Obama">Obama chanted in an ... Last Post in Iraq: this is the death knell of the American empire The Guardian - ‎5 hours ago‎ So the Yanks are going home. 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