U.S. Army Pfc. Skyler Roseenberry and Sgt. Michael Bearden walk on a street crowded with pilgrims during the Shiite Muslim ceremony commemorating the death of Mousa Al-Kadhim, the 7th Imam, in Kazimiyah, Iraq, on July 29, 2008. Each year devout Shiites gather at a mosque believed to sit on top of the grave site of the Imam. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez, U.S. Air Force. (Released)From The New York Daily News:
WASHINGTON - The Iraq war has entered its "end game," enabling the U.S. to bring home most of its 140,000 G.I.s within three years, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey has written in a new report.
The assessment made for the U.S. Military Academy by one of the Army's most decorated battle commanders is also an unsparing indictment of ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the generals who backed his failed effort to defeat an insurgency he initially denied.
"It is hard to not be bitter" about the early years of the war, McCaffrey wrote. Of the estimated $750 billion the war has cost, the 4,515 troops killed and the more than 30,000 wounded, the four-star general said, "It did not have to turn out this way."
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