The Americans provided covering fire while Iraqi soldiers pursued the attackers who had entered the compound, said Lt. Col Eric Bloom, a U.S. military spokesman. The U.S. intervention also included helicopters and drones, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
50,000 US troops remain in Iraq. Re-labeling them (“advisers”) doesn’t take them out of harm’s way. No magic, bulletproof “we’re not combat troops any more” force field pops into existence around them just because POTUS made a speech. They’re still there, and the fighting continues. <\/p>\n
The American combat mission in Iraq has ended? I need not deplete my own meager rhetorical arsenal for a pithy response — Confederate cavalry warlord (and, to his eternal discredit, Ku Klux Klan founder) Nathan Bedford Forrest provided that response 140-odd years ago:<\/p>\n
Damn such nonsense. War means fightin’ and fightin’ means killin’. Turn the grindstone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in buying. It connects my oceanfront properties in Kansas (also for sale) to the magical island where I keep my leprechaun-sourced gold hoard. From the Washington Post‘s account of an attack on an Iraqi army base today: The Americans provided covering fire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-iraq"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7990,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987\/revisions\/7990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7987"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}