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America leaves Iraq, again

The withdrawal represents the end of a long (and often, ugly) chapter in US history. It’s also great news for Iran.

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The last US troops in Iraq formally withdrew today, 23 years after the United States first invaded Iraq and 12 years after it returned to take on the Islamic State. It’s a historic occasion, by many accounts — but also a pretty low-key one: The US has steadily scaled back its presence in Iraq for years as part of a phased drawdown inked by the Biden administration.

That drawdown represents the end of a long (and often, ugly) chapter in US military history. The US and its allies deployed tens of thousands of troops to Iraq as part of the larger war on terror that started in 2003.

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Those troops left Iraq in 2011. But a smaller contingent returned three years later to stamp out the Islamic State, a violent........

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