The withdrawal, which will reduce the number of American troops to 50,000 --
from 112,000 earlier this year and close to 165,000 at the height of the
surge -- is a feat of logistics that has been called the biggest movement of
materiel since World War II. It is also an exercise in semantics.

What soldiers today would call combat operations -- hunting insurgents,
joint raids between Iraqi security forces and United States Special Forces
to kill or arrest militants -- will be called "stability operations."
Post-reduction, the United States military says the focus will be on
advising and training Iraqi soldiers, providing security for civilian
reconstruction teams and joint counterterrorism missions.

"In practical terms, nothing will change," said Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza,
the top American military spokesman in Iraq. "We are already doing stability
operations." Americans ceased major combat in Iraq long ago, and that has
been reflected in the number of casualties. So far this year, 14 soldiers
have been killed by hostile fire, and 27 more from accidents, suicides and
other noncombat causes, according to icasualties.org.

As fighting involving Americans tapered off, thousands of items of Iraq war
materiel were packed and shipped to Afghanistan. The complex and flexible
mission of cutting down forces while simultaneously keeping up the fight
with a festering insurgency could prove a model for Afghanistan, where
withdrawal is scheduled to begin next year. Next summer, the Americans will
begin to leave Afghanistan, too, and they probably won't be able to halt
fighting completely as they do so.

Beyond August the next Iraq deadline is the end of 2011, when all American
troops are supposed to be gone. But few believe that America's military
involvement in Iraq will end then. The conventional wisdom among military
officers, diplomats and Iraqi officials is that after a new government is
formed, talks will begin about a longer-term American troop presence.

"I like to say that in Iraq, the only thing Americans know for certain, is
that we know nothing for certain," said Brett H. McGurk, a former National
Security Council official in Iraq and current fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations. "The exception is what's coming once there's a new
government: they will ask to amend the Security Agreement and extend the
2011 date. We should take that request seriously. "

The mission here in the desert, a temporary base of armored vehicles and one
tent for two platoons, provided a vivid example of what American forces
still do on the ground and, military officers said, would be able to do
after the reduction.

"They needed someone killed, so they sent us," said Maj. Bryan L. Logan,
squadron operations officer for the Third Squadron, Seventh Cavalry
Regiment, referring to an insurgent cell that had been planting bombs near
the highway.

Iraqi security forces were not present or informed of the mission, a seeming
contravention of the emphasis from commanders that operations be conducted
jointly, and at the request of the Iraqis. Lt. Col. Michael Jason, the
brigade operations officer for the Third Infantry Division's Second Brigade,
said that the operation was unusual because it didn't "have an Iraqi face."

The operation was justified by a liberal interpretation of the security
agreement that allows unilateral operations to protect American forces, or,
in Colonel Jason's words, to address "unique American problem sets."

"That's what they are doing," he said, referring to his soldiers.

For the troops living in the desert, it was a return to the soldiering life
many hadn't experienced since earlier in the war or during training back
home: eating Meals Ready to Eat, or M.R.E.'s; sleeping on top of vehicles or
on the ground; firing artillery, albeit nonlethal, illuminated rounds to
remind insurgents that Americans are still here.

The legacy of the United States' seven-year war here will partly pivot on
how well the Iraqi police and army secure the country after the Americans
are gone. American military officers praise the rising capability of the
Iraqi security forces -- especially in securing the country for the
parliamentary elections in March. But questions of loyalty that arose during
the sectarian warfare of 2006 and 2007 remain.

So as some soldiers in the desert hunted for insurgents, others felt they
needed make sure that Iraqis at the checkpoint to Mosul were actually doing
their jobs and stopping and searching vehicles. In Mosul, suicide attacks
still regularly inflict damage.

The unit did not find the insurgents. But another unit close by found three
of them laying a bomb. Days later, officers watched a video taken from the
gunsight of an attack helicopter that killed the insurgents with a Hellfire
missile.

In the closing window of the American war here, commanders are still trying
to kill as many militants as possible, because they say it keeps American
forces and Iraqis safer. But in doing so, the United States military command
sometimes plays down the American role in the killing.

Almost daily, press releases are issued that announce the killing or capture
of terrorists by the Iraqi security forces, usually noting the involvement
of "U.S. advisers." Sometimes credit is not given when American soldiers
kill militants.

In April, the third-ranking member of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was killed by
Iraqi forces, according to a press release. But officers on the ground said
he was killed by fire from an American Bradley Fighting Vehicle. And no
press release has been issued about the three insurgents who were recently
killed by the American Hellfire missile.

As the soldiers were packing up the desert camp, Major Logan, who saw combat
in Iraq in 2003, stood watching and quoted Robert Duvall from a movie about
another American war, Vietnam, one that ended badly: "Someday this war is
going to end."



Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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