(Image Source: Al Jazeera)

BY HARUMENDHAH HELMY

ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY

After eight years, eight months and 26 days, a flag-lowering ceremony has officially ended the U.S. War in Iraq.

The BBC notes US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had to balance what worked and what didn’t in his speech.

Leon Panetta, US Defense Secretary: “We salute the fact that Iraq is now fully responsible for directing its own path to future security and future prosperity. To be sure, the cost was high. The blood and treasure of the United States and also for the Iraqi people.”

According to Foreign Policy, the war cost 800 billion taxpayer dollars, nearly 4,500 American troops, an estimated 100,000 Iraqi lives, as well as the displacement of millions of Iraqis. (Video: CNN)
 

The New York Times reflects on how the end of this war starkly contrasts with how it began.

“The muted ceremony stood in contrast to the start of the war in 2003 when an America both frightened and emboldened by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sent columns of tanks north from Kuwait to overthrow Saddam Hussein.”

euronews focuses its report on those in Iraq who are still unhappy.  

“In Fallujah, the centre of an al-Qaeda insurgency and some of the war’s bloodiest fighting, some among a crowd of thousands burned US flags. In Baghdad there was also despair about the outcome.
‘What have they accomplished? Nothing. From the first day they arrived, they destroyed the country and ever since they have sown seeds of division and sectarianism.”

At the height of the war in 2007, there were as many as 170,000 American troops in Iraq, spread over 500 installations. Now, only 4,000 American soldiers are left, and they are all scheduled to depart by Sunday, according to the Guardian. (Video: France 24)

The Washington Post suggests the troops’ withdrawal will have minimal immediate impact on Iraqis’ everyday lives.

“U.S. troops pulled out of the cities in 2009 and halted combat operations a year later. For more than a year, they have been training the Iraqi security forces on military bases, largely out of public sight, although Special Forces have continued to conduct counterterrorism operations. Many Iraqis were unaware that the departure was imminent[.]”

And The Atlantic Wire notes, even as it ends, the U.S. War in Iraq will remain controversial.

“People will continue to argue about whether the job is actually done or whether Americans should have got out years ago (or never gone in at all) or if the lowering of the flag really means anything when 15,000 people will stay behind to man the largest U.S. embassy in the world. But for all but a handful of advisor-soldiers, the war truly is over — even if the fight for control of Iraq isn't.”

According to The New York Times, a few hundred troops and civilians working for the Pentagon will remain.