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| Over 3,000 U.S.
troops have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait for operations pertaining to the recent developments in Syria and northern Iraq, Press TV reports. |
According to our
correspondent, the U.S. troops have secretly entered Iraq in multiple stages and
are mostly stationed at Balad military garrison in Salahuddin province and
al-Asad air base in al-Anbar province.
Reports say the
troops include U.S. Army officers and almost 17,000 more are set to secretly
return to Iraq via the same route.
All U.S. troops
left Iraq by the end of 2011, after nine years of occupation, as required by a
2008 bilateral security agreement between the two countries. The troops left
Iraq for the neighboring Kuwait.
Washington
decided to pull out all its troops from Iraq after Baghdad refused to grant
legal immunity to the remaining U.S. soldiers.
Washington
claims that the only U.S. military presence left in Iraq now is 157 soldiers
responsible for training at the U.S. Embassy, as well as a small contingent of
Marines protecting the diplomatic mission.
FACTS & FIGURES
In 2003, the
U.S. led the invasion of Iraq under the pretext that former Iraqi dictator,
Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The initial
invading force in Iraq was around 130,000 soldiers. This number was expected to be dropped
down to under 50,000 within a year.
Two years later, there were 150,000 U.S. soldiers in the country. One of the interesting Iraq war facts is
that as of November 2009, there were around 115,000 U.S. soldiers still
stationed there. iraqwarfacts.com
In October 2004,
a CIA report concluded that former Iraqi dictator did not possess weapons of
mass destruction at the time of U.S. invasion in 2003.
There is no
agency that keeps track of accurate numbers of Iraqis killed but some local
sources put the number well over one million.
Most of the
Iraqis displaced post-2006 have not returned home, and an estimated 1.5 million
live in neighboring countries. undispatch.com
The direct cost
of the Iraq war to the United States Treasury was $1 trillion. That excludes the
“downstream” costs of things like veteran benefits and long-term care for the
wounded. One trillion divided by the U.S. population of 307 million equals a
cost of over $3,200 per American citizen taxpayer.
undispatch.com
According to
icasualties.org, the total number of U.S. military fatalities, as a result of
the 2003 attack and the following occupation, stands at
4,486.
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