Iraqis Celebrate Withdrawal, Burn US and Israeli Flags - US Honors its Defeat in Iraq

US Honors its Defeat in Iraq Ceremony

Mission not accomplished Local Editor

As US forces was closing its main office in Baghdad to end nine years of occupation, the US administration gears up to minimize the damage it had faced by the resilience and resistance of the Iraqi people who went out to streets yesterday to celebrate the occupation's defeat. A ceremony will be held for this occasion today to fold the latest chapter in the story of a bloody story which started when the United States thought it would win the Iraqis support by toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. But the story has taken a different course when it killed tens of thousands of Iraqis by paving the way for chaos in the country. The US flag is to be lowered in Baghdad just after 10am GMT (1pm local time). US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Lloyd Austin, the top US commander in Iraq, will all speak. On the Iraqi front, President Jalal Talabani will be present, among other top Iraqi officials, but it is not clear if Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will attend, an American official said. Honoring defeat The US is anxious to avoid any notion of triumphalism, or 'mission accomplished' slogans. Around 300 soldiers will witness the ceremonial end of the most costly and contentious war of modern times. Of a war he once branded "dumb" when he was gaining support for presidential elections, President Barack Obama on Wednesday honored America's nearly nine years of "bleeding and building" in Iraq, hailing the "extraordinary achievement" "Welcome home, welcome home," Obama chanted in an aircraft hangar in North Carolina, basking in the "Ooh Ahh" cheers and red berets of 82nd Airborne Division troops, part of the final US exodus from Iraq unfolding this month. "It is harder to end a war than to begin one," said Obama, who made the responsible resolution of a conflict unleashed in the "shock and awe" US aerial bombing of Baghdad in March 2003 his core political promise. In turn, Panetta said: “We spilled a lot of blood there. But all of that has not been in vain. It's been to achieve a mission making that country sovereign and independent and able to govern and secure itself.”

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Iraqis Celebrate Withdrawal, Burn US and Israeli Flags
Local Editor

Hundreds of Iraqis set alight US and Israeli flags on Wednesday as they celebrated the impending pullout of Occupation forces from the country in the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah.
Shouting slogans in support of the Iraqi resistance, the demonstrators held up banners and placards inscribed with phrases like, "Now we are free" and "Fallujah is the flame of the resistance."

The demonstration was dubbed the first annual festival to celebrate the role of the resistance.

The United States is due to pull out the last of its troops from Iraq by the end of the year, more than eight years after the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Fallujah, home to about a half a million people 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, was home to some of the first anti-US protests in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, in May of that year.
Between the years 2004 and 2005, the US military launched several massive offensives against Fallujah city, signs of which are still visible today in collapsed buildings and bullet holes in walls.

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