Obama’s statement, February 27, 2009: “I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned.”
The news today:
The White House is offering to keep up to 10,000 troops in Iraq next year, U.S. officials say, despite opposition from many Iraqis and key Democratic Party allies who demand that President Barack Obama bring home the American military as promised.
I suppose this news will be greeted with a shrug; Obama said that combat in Iraq is over, and the public appears to believe him, even though the facts on the ground are not quite the same.
On August 31, 2010, Obama said in an Oval Office address that “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.”
Since Obama declared that the U.S. combat mission had ended nearly a year ago, 31 American servicemen have been killed by hostile fire, grenades, improvised explosive devices, rocket attacks, and sniper fire in Iraq.