Iraq Troop Withdrawal, U.s. Troops | featured news

TV stations aligned with Sunni and Shiite extremist groups, many of whom attacked U.S. troops, have dubbed it the "Day of Defeating the Occupier."

Soldiers who just returned from Iraq are among several thousand being ordered to Afghanistan in six months as part of a mission designed to beef up Afghan forces ahead of a planned 2014 U.S. military withdrawal, officials said.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta marked on Thursday the end of the U.S. war in Iraq, with the last American troops withdrawing nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

President Barack Obama welcomed home some of the last U.S. troops from Iraq on Wednesday, marking a symbolic end to the nearly nine-year war that strained America's armed forces and inflicted lasting damage to its standing worldwide.

All US troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year, President Barack Obama has announced. He ordered a complete withdrawal from the country, nearly nine years after the invasion under President George W Bush. About 39,000 US troops remain in Iraq, down from a peak of 165,000 in 2008. The US and Iraq were in "full agreement" on how to move forward, Mr Obama said, adding: "The US leaves Iraq with our heads held high."

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned.

The U.S. official in charge of overseeing reconstruction in Iraq says the country is more dangerous than it was a year ago, a blunt assessment that comes five months before American troops are scheduled to leave.

Iraqi leaders aim to decide within two weeks whether American troops should stay in the country past the end of the year, Iraq's president announced.

He says the U.S. "has paid a huge price" to give Iraqis the chance to shape their future - a price that now includes more than 4,400 U.S. dead.

Iraq's prime minister put his nation on its highest level of alert for terror attacks, warning of plots to sow fear and chaos as the U.S. combat ...