Posts Tagged ‘Iraq War’
Wounded Soldiers Return to Iraq, Seeking Solace
FORWARD OPERATING BASE NORMANDY, Iraq — Soldiers have often returned to old battlefields, to honor fallen comrades and to exorcise persistent demons. British soldiers go back to the Falklands. Normandy cemeteries are on many V.F.W. and American Legion itineraries. Vietnam veterans can even get package tours now to the places where they were stationed.
Now, Americans wounded in the Iraq war are being ferried back to the scenes where they were maimed to help achieve psychological closure, the first time such visits have been tried while a war is still in progress.
The seven-day program, called Operation Proper Exit, has been kept quiet previously, partly because returning to a combat zone is considered a delicate experiment. For the eight wounded men who returned to Iraq this week, including five amputees and one blinded soldier, the hope is that returning to places many of them left while unconscious or in agony might reassure them that their losses have been worth it.
US to Send Home 4,000 More Troops from Iraq
WASHINGTON — The top general in Iraq is sending home 4,000 more U.S. troops by the end of October as the American military winds down the six-year war. Army Gen. Ray Odierno said in remarks prepared for a congressional hearing Wednesday that the number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq will total about 120,000 over the next month.
He said that will mean about 4,000 fewer troops than are in Iraq now — about the size of an Army brigade.
“As we go forward, we will thin our lines across Iraq in order to reduce the risk and sustain stability through a deliberate transition of responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces,” Odierno said in a statement he was to deliver before the House Armed Services Committee.
A copy of the testimony was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
A Defense Department official confirmed Odierno planned to announce at the House hearing that he is reducing the number of brigades in Iraq, as has been long expected.
In his eight-page statement, Odierno cited data showing that the monthly number of attacks in Iraq have dramatically dropped over the last two years — from more than 4,000 in August 2007 to about 600 last month. He also said that far fewer al-Qaida and foreign fighters remain in Iraq, and most of those who are left are criminals and disenfranchised Iraqis who have been recruited by what Odierno described as a “small ideological core” of insurgents.