Troops out now. Iraq is fading into the background so long as the USA continues to indulge the idea of USA troops back into Iraq. It is an outrageous situation.

The USA military are not mercenaries. If the men and women in the USA want to be mercenaries, there is a market for that, but, it cannot be found in our military or it's budget.

April 5, 2016
By Atul Singh

...This week, US President Barack Obama (click here) hosted the Nuclear Security Summit and fretted about mad men getting “their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material.” A 2014 report by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) estimated that “nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe.” The NTI report points out that some of these sites are poorly secured and that terrorists might have acquired the ability to build a bomb.

Obama focused on the Islamic State (IS) during his remarks to the summit. He pointed out that IS “continues to lose ground.” The organization is hemorrhaging men, material and money. Incessant pounding by airstrikes have decimated its oil infrastructure, slowing revenues to a trickle. Syrian troops have recaptured Palmyra, the stunning ancient city that IS damaged with fanatic ferocity. The so-called caliphate of the Islamic State is shrinking by the day, but the ideas it represents live on.

Why is it when Syrian troops are provided real military hardware like tanks and air support they have no problem taking a city that was once part of the violence of Daesh, but, Iraq's military has no clue how to do that?

Attacks are taking place with disturbing regularity in different parts of the world. It is unlikely that IS operates a global command and control center coordinating attacks. What is definitely true is that many young Muslim men are inspired by this fanatical organization and are emulating its methods....

Perhaps there was a real anti-USA movement in Iraq even in it's early days.

On March 31, 2004, (click here) an enraged mob attacked and overturned a vehicle in the streets of Fallujah, Iraq.[1] Four men were dragged from the wreck and beaten with sticks and stones. All four men were US citizens with Special Forces backgrounds. Their training and skills were of little help to them as they were dragged through the streets by an ecstatic crowd, shot and dozed with gasoline and burned. Their charred bodies were hung from a bridge for all to see, including international news media. This violent tragedy would be the first time that most Americans heard about the men’s employer, a relatively unknown Virginia-based security firm, and the new and controversial world of private military contractors.

That is 50 billion US, not 50 million. We are out of there! Burnt corpse is remarkably reminiscent to Daesh's methodology.

In 2010, private military companies (PMCs) invoices accounted for more than $50,000,000,000 annually, or about a third of the US defense budget for military personnel[2]. Blackwater, the employer of the four Fallujah victims, is the most successful security contractor to have been in existence, but also also the most controversial. Its story teaches us more about the economic and political benefits and pitfalls of outsourcing security than any other company. At the peak of its activity in the late 2000s, Blackwater ran thriving operations in the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, offering a wide array of services ranging from close-quarter combat training to personal protection of US Diplomats and airlift support for the Department of Defense. The company also provided security services at fixed locations for some of the CIA’s most sensitive, and sold security intelligence and risk management services to government agencies and corporations alike....