the United States military announced a formal end to almost nine years of war in Iraq. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta presided over a modest flag-lowering ceremony in Baghdad that was witnessed by few Iraqis due to security concerns. The U.S. media was invited to attend the ceremony, but the Iraqi media was shut out.
Over the past nine years, the U.S. invasion has left a bloody toll on Iraqi civilians and foreign troops. Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops died. Another 32,000 were wounded. An accurate toll of Iraqis killed may never be known. According to Iraq Body Count, at least 104,000 Iraqi civilians have died. In 2006, the British medical journal Lancet estimated 600,000 Iraqis had already been killed. Other studies put the death toll over a million. Hundreds of thousands of more Iraqis died due to the crippling sanctions in the years between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 U.S. invasion. After 20 years of war and sanctions, Iraq’s infrastructure has been devastated.
While the U.S. military is largely leaving Iraq, the United States is not. The U.S. will operate the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, literally the size of the Vatican. The diplomatic effort will be run by the State Department, staffed with thousands of private contractors. It’s estimated more than 16,000 contractors will remain in Iraq. They have their own armed Air Force.