Apparently, it’s mission accomplished, finally.
The Wall Street Journal reports U.S. Military Exits Iraq, Leaving Behind a Nation in Peril
After spending more than 23 years and $1.7 trillion, America is winding down what critics have called its forever war in Iraq, closing the last major U.S. military base on Wednesday.
“We don’t think we need the military there anymore,” President Trump said during a White House visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi in July. “We have a fantastic champion, a new champion,” the president said. “He’s young, and he’s handsome.”
Zaidi, a 41-year-old businessman, sat beside Trump during the visit and announced a deadline, also set for Wednesday, for Iranian-backed militias to hand over their weapons. “There is no justification for their existence after the 30th of September,” he said.
Instead, America’s open-ended war with Iran is pushing Iraq deeper into conflict, with the U.S. exit leaving behind a country where well-armed militias are only tightening their grip. Militants and Iranian forces launched more than 600 attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military facilities in Iraq in the first two months of the war, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In a sign of Iraq’s instability, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad now sends frequent security warnings to individual Americans and others. About two a week regard kidnapping by militants. A team from the Journal abruptly left Baghdad this month after Iraqi, U.S. and European officials warned of a security threat that American officials later said was a kidnapping risk by a Shiite militia.
Zaidi, who never held public office before becoming prime minister in May, has been embraced by the Trump administration as someone they can do business with. He owns a bank, an insurance company and media and construction firms. His bank was banned by the Treasury Department from dollar transactions in 2024 over suspicions it helped finance Iran and its proxies. Zaidi denied knowing about such transactions. Former U.S. officials said they didn’t believe he had any personal involvement.
The Trump administration is counting on Zaidi to disarm the militants, which number in the tens of thousands and include paramilitary groups that receive funding or weapons from Iran.
Others scoffed at the idea. “These weapons are for our sovereignty, our freedom,” said Kazem al-Fartousi, a spokesman for Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, a paramilitary group the U.S. designated as a terrorist organization, funded and armed by Iran.
A forced disarmament by the government “will not happen,” he said in an interview in Baghdad. His group and other militias hold top positions in ministries, as well as dozens of seats in Iraq’s parliament where they played a role in Zaidi’s selection in the negotiations that followed last year’s election.
Ayatollah postcards
In Baghdad, young professionals sipped iced coffee and typed on laptops in the exclusive Karrada neighborhood on a recent, seemingly peaceful day. Yet many said they plan to leave, worried that insecurity and economic pressures will build without a strong U.S. presence.
“If the troops were to leave, why were they here in the first place? They were here to accomplish a goal. Did they? No,” said Mustafa Al-Zaidi, a 22-year-old medical student who plans to eventually work abroad. “Will we be like Afghanistan or like Yemen and Syria?”
Mission Accomplished, Not
If we accomplished anything, someone tell me what. We wasted over a trillion for nothing.
Now we can expect a civil war between Shiite and Suni factions.
But leaving is always the right thing when we never should have been there in the first place.
We should not be messing with Iran either.
But,..but…but Bushie told us a couple of decades ago Mission Accomplished and freedumb was on the march…
Hefty reparations are in order. Alas, were the US a civilized country.
The Epstein class churches under the spiritual guidance of Rev. Billy Graham cheered as the USA dropped massive amounts of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, with the unexploded ordnance maiming and killing men, women, and children every day over a half century later. They could go clean up their mess, but there’s no money in cleaning it up; there’s only money in dropping bombs and building more.
If you want to read something really sick, read Rev. Graham’s 1971 op-ed where he wanted mercy for Lt. Calley and his troops that raped little girls and adults alike and then killed them, along with killing babies and the elderly. The reverend said the laws were “too strict”. He was the OG pedo protector, long before the current crop.
The only positive that I can think of is: significant weakening of ISIS.
Boondoggle after boondoggle it’s the us fed gov way.
Wasn’t the goal always about funding the military industrial machine? That 1.7T seems like a gross underestimate – hell they erased 2T alone by blowing a hole in the side of the Pentagon where the accounting office was located on 9/11.
Maybe now a partitioning of Iraq? It was really 3 tribal groupings shoved together in absentia on a map by Britain and France to begin with, Sunni, Shia and Kurd. As for Baghdad, I would expect some kind of Saddam type strongman emerges, the only question being whether he is Ba’ath/Sunni or Shia.
Maybe that’s the Iraqis’ problem?
the USA continues on it’s trajectory of diminishing empire, and Americans get poorer despite all the paper money shenanigans. BS ultimately has no value and everyone outside the USA now sees it
And the clown king accelerates the process
Dumb to go there but ill call iraq a win. Least its government is stable( for middle east). The results were better than vietnam and afghanistan .
A couple trillion down the shitter, millions of dead and refugees, all to replace a stable government that Israel didn’t like with an unstable puppet regime.
And Saddam, as hobbled by us in Gulf War I, was still a check on Iran.
Considering that the estimates for the much smaller scale and shorter War On Afghanistan were $2-3T, I’ma call bullshit on that $1.7T figure.
The United States is not “leaving” anything, since it continues to control Iraq’s oil revenues, doling out Iraq its own money when, if and to the extent that the Americans see fit.
Until China takes over the Middle East.
How is that going to happen?
By peaceful fair trade and being a good international citizen country.
I’m sure the NY Federal Reserve likes having its DFI slush fund.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-us-controls-iraqs-oil-revenues-2026-09-30/
Iraq needs a ruthless, secular leader to keep the peace. You know, like Saddam Hussein.
$1.7T? The costs are much higher when you include the indirect costs in lives, dollars, and national reputation for 23 years of a war based entirely on lies. Government contractors, the MIC, the oil industry, all profited from the invasion and the subsequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
An estimate from 2023 was $3 trillion on the Iraq war when the cost of Veterans’ benefits through 2050 are taken into account. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-war-bush-twentieth-anniversary-b2302031.html
Yup the VA budget has quadrupled in 20 years.
The Iraq conflict was a net transfer of power and money from US taxpayers to US oligarchs. But it was a net overall loss in the USA’s overall stability, finances, and prestige. Blood and treasure (privacy and cyber security for peasants) down the toilet for us, unless you were positioned to receive the bucks.
Cheney’s Halliburton sure did well as did the Bush family which sold all of that depleted uranium for weapons… Follow the dollars…
Imagine how low profits for the oil companies would be if it were not for the constant middle eastern wars. The big problem is “What happens when the fracking boom ends”.
The full cost is likely several times more, care/benefits for veterans and their families. Wounded and disabled troops were an order of magnitude more than the dead US troops. Many were completely incapacitated and will have to be cared for for the rest of their lives.
There is also the cost of increased Iranian influence going forward. What a clusterfuck!
The most interesting thing that I have noted is that not a single responsible person felt any repercussion at all. Those who peddled false “intelligence”, those who authored the torture memos etc. This is what will perpetuate this forever until we as a country resolve to hold people accountable. We will get a chance in a few years to hold people accountable again. Let’s see if the country has the courage to do it.
See Epstein files for your answer.
Mish echoes the foreign-policy views of our far-left progressives. So it is worthwhile to review those positions and their implications. That we do not militarily intervene anywhere or for any reason. Or provide military assistance. (Or retaliate for any attack on us. Hasan Piker tells us that attacks on us are well justified.)
Other nations will define what the rest of the world looks like, and the rest of the world’s actions towards us.
These wars you love so much have resulted in a world that hates us more by the day. My friends with summer cottages in Canada are no longer welcomed with open friendliness.
Most of our allies have turned their backs on us as Trumps military threats alienate global good will. You can see it in lost tourism nationwide.
Who do you want to attack next?
Israel is now the #1 pariah of the world community, the US a close second if not Siamese twins.
The tragedy is that > 95% of US citizens are peaceful. The country is being dragged into eternal wars by CIA/Mossad warmongers worshipping their master, with a few pandemics sprinkled in here and there to follow up with population reduction injections aka safe and effective vaccination programs.
We are all brothers and sisters and spiritual beings. Once the global paradigm changes to this it’s game over for Rothschild, Gates & Co.
Usonian citizens are not peaceful. Half of the families is related to someone employed by the DoW, not counting contractors.
Usonia delenda est.
Had to look up “Usonian”.
Not so sure about “delenda est”. That’s what got our civilization(s) to where we are in the first place. Lies, division, and hate the # 1 tools of the would-be world masters. Contrast that with “global peace” – even if it’s probably an illusion until there is a drastic change.
The view from someone who’s never fought in a war and never thought beyond his closed, brain-dead circle.
You are saying that making war on Iraq on the basis of lies was a good thing.
Go outside and touch grass if you think Hasan Piker is a real representative of the left in this country
Jeebus, go talk to a human being, social media is a fat lie
Comical how Fox News covers Hasan Piker (a Twitch streamer who is a socialist) like he is the mastermind of the Democrat Party. They watch and report on everything he does, every comment he makes, and try to associate it all with Democrat politicians.
The silver lining is that you can immediately tell you’re talking to a brainwashed idiot if they start up with the Fox talking points. They might as well have a sticker on their forehead.
Mish, from a purely economic basic it was successful to shareholders of the major defense contractors (stocks outperformed the S&P 500 index), lobbyists and the revolving door of former military and elected officeholders reaping fees as middlemen in private sector plus a testing ground for new weaponry….that was intended purpose right? (sarcasms)
That’s not sarcasm.
It’s time to reduce our military to near zero. Inform the world we will no longer interfere with their internal issues and that our only real defense is nuclear and any attack on the US will result in a nuclear response. Then the money spend on the military should be shifted to infrastructure repair and improvement. We could make our infrastructure as good as China, but under the current circumstances that will never happen.
We are taking on something like the eternal Russian curse: good people, resources and skills are here, but bad, corrupt governance is diminishing what we could be. The last 25 years have been damning. Now we are bogging down like the Russians.
They bounced higher after Yeltsin.
People voted for this government when it was clear how evil it would be. I think it’s too convenient to just blame it on governance.
A million Iraqis got killed during the US occupation. That’s far worse than spending $1.7tn on a pointless war.
I suspect that the real number was much higher.
The mass of those murdered were as innocent as anyone can be. The WMD liars should be regarded as scum of the earth.
Gee, maybe they can make it to airports to leave without the government falling or getting shot at. Iraq was an inconsistent patchwork held together by a dictator. Maybe the Kurds come out ahead.
You should really look into the history of the ME before making knee jerk comments. The ME has always been a mess but exacerbated by the western democracies. Look it up. And our friend above, David O, thinks we should stay the course and expand the good work.
No, it has not, at least until 1948.
I do recommend the article “The Rise And…Rise Of ‘Color Revolutions’” by Kit Klarenberg.
Search for his substack.
Related to that, on Eric Zeusse’s substack, there are a couple more related articles. The most recent complements Kit’s article. The one before that provides a transcript of Harold Pinter’s speech in response to receiving an award. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, you really should.
I won’t try to add links, unfortunately.
Let’s see if this comment platform allows this link:
[Doh. It doesn’t even allow links to nobelprize! ]
He spoke just a couple years into the Oceania invasion and occupation of Iraq. And rereading it two decades later, it remains more true than ever.
2 years shy of getting a gold watch.
– Jimmy Dore
At least we got rid of those weapons of mass destruction. 🤣
What a fucking waste Iraq was. We spent our Medicare For All money to help the Israeli’s become the wannabe oil hegemon of the Middle East. Would have been better to have a strong secular Iraq as a counter to Iran. Will be a very short period of time before the Iraqi government is aligned with Iran. I do not think the Iraqis desire a Sunni/Shia civil war as they both hate the US and Israel. One can bet the Israeli’s will do their damnedest to help instigate one. Would be smarter for the Iraqis to keep together and take Kuwait and get more oil production. They could also get together with some eastern tribes in Saudi Arabia and take most of the Saudi oil as well. Just have to promise the tribes a piece of the oil revenues. Since the Donald seems to think might makes right they might as well have at it. All of these Gulf monarchies are weak as hell militarily.
I think the smart thing for us to do individually is get solar and batteries for energy and transportation. The Middle East will probably be a shitshow for years…Venezuela will rebel, perhaps even Ecuador as well as we are not paying them shit for their oil either…And the stupid fuck Europeans seem to be hot for a war with Russia.
> and the stupid fuck Europeans seem to be hot for a war with Russia.
No-one in his right mind in Europe is hot for a war with Russia.
Replace that with “fuck-stupid European politicians and military controlled by Anglo-Zionist warmongers”. Supported by MSM media – “Trusted News” – same source.
The oligarch class are the only ones who count, in europe same as anywhere else, and in europe, the oligarch class are foaming at the mouth rabid for war.
The ruling class in Europe are doing exactly what Trump, Hegseth, and the Americans are telling them: spend 5% of GDP ordering weapons from the USA, swallow US imposed tariffs, burden share the US/NATO war with Russia as best as they can, and buy expensive/precarious energy from the US instead of cheap/dependable energy from Russia. Perfect vassals.
The problem with all these “democracies” is that they simply do not respond to the public will. Not in the US, where Trump and the elites simply carry on, no matter what they promise, nor in Europe, where despite reconfigurations of coalition politics, they keep doing what they were doing. Migration has been an issue for 50 years, continually rising further to the top of most important issues, finally becoming a number #1 issue, and still, nothing changes. The ruling elite regards it as a far-right issue that needs to be suppressed, just as any whisper of not advancing full-on war with Russia must be suppressed as traiterous.
Democracies do not respond to the public will. The rulers never would allow it.
That’s why there was the big movement by masons/zionists in Europe beginning of the last century to take out both the church and monarchies that typically defended the interests of their countrymen. Politician muppets much easier to corrupt. Largely jewish Bolsheviks killed 30 million Russians after murdering the Czar and his family, Russia then being a deeply Christian country. One of the reasons it’s being targeted again. Democracies always end badly – only a question of time until criminals run the governments.
“I think the smart thing for us to do individually is get solar and batteries for energy and transportation.”
Well, the last administration (and some before that) thought similarly and incorporated tax incentives for individuals (people and businesses) to go to solar and battery. Some people did that and now don’t worry about what’s happening as much in the ME. And their actions also made things cheaper for the remainder (any gas not going into an EV is gas for someone else to buy ‘cheaper’ for their ICE).
Others thought that societal plan was stupid, and voted for Trump to get rid of the incentives (and to start a war with Iran, it seems). I’m guessing now some of those others are now rethinking what the “smart thing for us to do” in the future is.
I didn’t know we were still in Iraq.
Americans know little and care less what damage their country does around the globe. You’re just one of the many who keep voting for more of the same.
He’s rich, he’s handsome, and Melania likes him. What more can Trump ask for in a leader?
Surely not brains.
It’s what happens under the table that counts.
The fact that Trump would mention him being “handsome” just confirms my sense that there is a distinctly homoerotic vibe running through DT’s administration.
They killed Sadam, rightly or wrongly, who was originally an American asset and fought Iran and got guarantees from US he wouldn`t lose but then US armed Iran and Sadam never forgave US. Meanwhile, the 9/11 attacks were caused by 15 Saudi nationals, out of 19, and nothing ever happened about that.
All a giant cluster f***.
https://intelligence.house.gov/UploadedFiles/declasspart4.pdf
I feel your frustration but offer this nitpick:
>> Meanwhile, the 9/11 attacks were caused by 15 Saudi nationals, out of 19
If you are younger than 35 years old, go to James Corbett’s website. Look for his “best of” page.
If you are older, I accept that you are likely disinterested and that’s okay.
Who the fall guy from this wasted capital? The USA taxpayers.
Deservedly so, since the Usonian taxpayer not only funded it, but voted for it and volunteered their sins to die for it.
What do you mean ‘waste’???
The US successfully ruined another country. That’s what the US does.
Getting rid of Sadam was mistake. That was the only way that country could be governed. He was no angel but at least there was safety law and order. This is what I was told by multiple Iraqis living here. I was skeptical but coincidentally heard those words uttered by a female doctor in Baghdad being interviewed by newsmen and aired on TV. Good job George. What an idiot.
Not an “idiot”. Just the bad guy for public perception. To take the heat off the more permanent structures and class.
Like Trump.
Trump didn’t invent the need for a simplistic bad guy. Trump didn’t invent dumb excuses to start wars. Trump is merely the most cheesy version I’ve seen. His casually bad aesthetics annoy me. He comes from the cheapest mass television. I want my liars slicker and sleeker. It’s a snob thing. Oh, and I would like it more effective, once the domestic suckers fall for it all. If nothing else, let’s have some actual wins for the plebes for a change. We are being led around by the Mussolini of our times. Apart from the tackiest stealing, he can’t even tie his shoes.
Agree. He’s terribly embarrassing. A caricature of a sales shmuck. A composite of John Gotti and Joe Isuzu.
A friend of mine, who volunteered for a couple of tours in Iraq and who has since gotten wise, tells me that, other than the American installed rulers, *nobody* in Iraq sees themselves as better off.
Put it another way, since the Bush maladministration claimed to have such touching concern for Christians – the Christians (and Jews) of Iraq survived and sometimes thrived for almost two thousand years. They survived the Sassanids, they survived the Seljuks, the Mongols, they survived Tamerlane, Murad, Baibars, Bayezid, Nadir Shah and Saddam Hussein, as well as countless others, some benign, others less so.
The Christians of Iraq did not survive the tender mercies of the Americans. Those Christian communities are basically gone, now, dead, refugees, or forced to convert.
The Epstein class churches in the USA are the most ardent supporters of Israel exterminating Christianity in the West Bank, Gaza, and Christian villages in Lebanon.
He needs to concentrate his attention on the Western hemisphere. That’s his goal
I pity Latin America, which is about to be Afghanistaned and Iraqed.
Bull. Otherwise we would not have attacked Iran at Israel’s order.
Iraq begins with an ‘I’
Iran beings with an ‘I’
Israel begins with an ‘I’
I’m beginning to see a trend that we should have avoided at all costs.
ha. _f only we could remove a vowel to make all our problems d_sappear. _’m all for _t!
Hmm –India? Italy?
Iowa? Indiana?
Only $1.7T? I honestly think that’s a lowball. Plus nearly 4500 lives. All to achieve a Pox Americana.
That’s just the invaders. What about the poor Iraqi civilians?
Will the US blockade of the Hormuz strait still be in place in 23 years (2049)?
Mission accomplished!
The war contractors appreciated it.
As long as Israel has free universal healthcare that’s all that matters.