Last American Troops Left Iraq This Morning
In the early morning Sunday hours 110 armored trucks and other vehicles carrying more than 500 soldiers began a five-hour drive from Iraq to Kuwait down the main supply route previously referred to as Main Supply Route Tampa, thus marking the end of a U.S. occupied era in Iraq.
According to CNN those soldiers were the last of 12,000 who were stationed at the Camp Adder base just one month earlier, a base that even as of Thursday’s flag-casing ceremony was still home to more than 1,000 troops.
The base, formerly full of coffee shops, an Italian Restaurant and other shops, is now in the hands of the Iraqi government to do with it what they please.
According to the Associated Press troops cheered, pumped their fists in the air and hugged one another as they left the base while one military member shouted “We’re on top of the world!”
Many of the men and women to leave with the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division had been with the war since it started, some serving on their 2nd, 3rd and even 4th deployments into the country. Speaking to CNN one staff sergeant who entered the country in 2003 noted:
“The biggest thing about going home is just that it’s home.” That soldier added, “It’s civilization as I know it—the Western world, not sand and dust and the occasional rain here and there.”
Do you think it’s about time the soldiers in Iraq come home? Unfortunately for many of the soldiers happy to be leaving one war they will soon embark on deployments to Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries with terrorist interests.
[Image via ShutterStock.com]
