“Iraq” on The Daily Caller

KHABARI CROSSING, Kuwait (AP) — The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border into neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. Their convoy’s exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war that raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered and struggling to recover. (more)

WASHINGTON — They are coming home. For the first time since March 19, 2003, there are no U.S. combat or combat support troops in Iraq. There is still a contingent of U.S. Marines guarding the biggest American embassy in the world and the largest military attache’s office at any diplomatic mission. But there is no doubt in anyone’s mind — ally or enemy — that the war in Iraq is over. The only uncertainty now: Who won? (more)

President Barack Obama has begun trying to reach military voters from the campaign trail, praising soldiers’ accomplishments and scaling back his portrayal of soldiers as wounded warriors dependent on government services. (more)

The Royal Navy’s men and women aboard the HMS Ocean may have caught Mariah Carey’s attention with their recent Christmas love song, but they aren’t the first to pass the hours and hours and hours — and hours — of military boredom by making hysterical and downright creepy music videos. Here for your enjoyment, and in no particular order, are The Daily Caller’s top five combat-zone morale boosters. (more)

Ron Paul, the outspoken libertarian congressman and Republican presidential candidate from Texas, disagreed with his fellow GOP hopefuls on the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons at the CBS/National Journal debate on Saturday. (more)

1.) Obama is very disappointed in you, United States Constitution — Are you satisfied, Constitution? Everything would be great right now if you would just let Obama do whatever he wants. But nooooo. Well, fine. Fine. Now see what you’re making him do. TheDC’s Nicholas Ballasy reports: (more)

Pennsylvania’s former GOP Senator, Rick Santorum, slammed President Barack Obama on his handling of the Iraq war Sunday, saying on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the United States had “lost the war in Iraq” because Obama was pulling troops out, leaving Iran as the dominating force in the country. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s long and deeply unpopular war in Iraq will be over by year’s end and all U.S. troops “”will definitely be home for the holidays,” President Barack Obama declared Friday. (more)

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish soldiers, air force bombers and helicopter gunships launched an incursion into northern Iraq on Wednesday, hours after Kurdish rebels killed 24 soldiers and wounded 18 in attacks along the border. (more)

Michael Totten’s new book, “In the Wake of the Surge,” chronicles his first-hand view of how President Bush’s 2007 Iraq surge staved off disaster in that war-torn country. (more)

BAGHDAD (AP) — Three violent strikes against Iraqi security forces on Wednesday killed 19 people and wounded more than 50 across Iraq as the country struggles to protect itself while facing the U.S. military’s departure at the end of the year. (more)

The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News. (more)

BAGHDAD (AP) — August marked the first month since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that no American forces have died, according to an Associated Press tally. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is on the run, his capital all but fallen to rebels, his hometown under siege. (more)

A U.S. government contractor in Iraq charged the Pentagon a whopping amount of money for inexpensive items, including $900 for a $7 control switch, according to a new report from a U.S. watchdog. (more)

On a sweltering spring day in Iraq, days after American forces rolled into Baghdad, Harvard-educated historian Tamara Chalabi wandered through an abandoned house searching for a sign of its former occupants. Tamara, the daughter of Iraq’s infamous Ahmad Chalabi, found it outside, where “a life-size stone statue of a deer stood,” she writes. “I knew that my grandfather Hadi had loved that deer as much as his father before him. Someone had beheaded it.” (more)

The U.S. Department of Defense was unable to account properly for $8.7 billion of Iraqi oil and gas money meant for humanitarian needs and reconstruction after the 2003 invasion, according to an audit released on Tuesday. (more)

During his first visit to Iraq as defense secretary, Leon Panetta seemed to link America’s presence in the country to the 9/11 attacks. (more)

BAGHDAD — 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 Obama bring home the American military as promised. (more)

BAGHDAD — Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are using more sophisticated weapons than in the past to target U.S. troops and military installations in Iraq, according to senior U.S. officials. (more)