The Iraq war is finally over. And it marks a complete neocon defeat

[CHIMO]

The Iraq war is over. Buried by the news from Libya, Barack Obama announced late on Friday that all US troops will leave Iraq by 31 December.

The president put a brave face on it, claiming he was fulfilling an election promise to end the war, though he had actually been supporting the Pentagon's effort to make a deal with Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep US bases and several thousand troops there indefinitely.

The talks broke down because Moqtada al-Sadr's members of parliament and other Iraqi nationalists insisted that US troops be subject to Iraqi law. In every country where they are based the US insists on legal immunity and refuses to let troops be tried by foreigners. In Iraq the issue is especially sensitive after numerous US murders of civilians and the Abu Ghraib scandal in which Iraqi prisoners were sexually humiliated. In almost every case where US courts tried US troops, soldiers were acquitted or received relatively brief prison sentences.

The final troop withdrawal marks a complete defeat for Bush's Iraq project. The neocons' grand plan to use the 2003 invasion to turn the country into a secure pro-western democracy and a garrison for US bases that could put pressure on Syria and Iran lies in tatters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/23/us-withdrawal-iraq-defeat-bush-neocons

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. And everybody lost.

That's what happens when you throw a war and everybody comes.

[tcaudilllg]

2. And the Shiites reign for the foreseeable future.

I can already see the dynamics of the new Iraq, can't you? In substance, the same as the old Iraq, just with different people running the show.

[Jim Lane]

3. No, some of the neocons' key objectives were met.

1. They killed Saddam. They intensely disliked him. As a related point, Dim Son got to take credit for "finishing" what his father couldn't, cheering those who wanted him to outdo Poppy.

2. Speaking of Dim Son, another key objective was met. He won a second term.

3. More broadly, the big military build-up, in great part (though not exclusively) for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, produced a militarization of American society, with the glorification of the use of force, suppression of civil liberties, and bloated profits for military contractors.

Suppose the neocons had it to do all over again, knowing what they know now about Saddam's nonexistent WMD's and terror connections, the horrific cost to this country, and the even more horrific cost to Iraq. I'm certain they'd do it all over again.

After all, none of them got killed.

[Zoeisright]

4. Sure, they'd do it again. They got rich off it.

Fucking cocksuckers, all of them.