During the Thursday ceremony in Baghdad, troops lowered the U.S. Forces-Iraq flag and wrapped it in camouflage in an Army tradition called "casing."
"To be sure the cost was high -- in blood and treasure of the United States and also the Iraqi people," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the roughly 200 troops and others in attendance. "Those lives have not been lost in vain. They gave birth to an independent, free and sovereign Iraq.
All U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year. But many will come home without comrades; 4,487 American troops were killed in the war and 32,000 were wounded. The war has cost more than $800 billion.
As the war comes to an end, Chicagoans whose lives were forever changed by it spoke of honor, sacrifice and lessons learned.
Loretta Capeheart's nephew died in Iraq and she said, "It's certainly not over for the Iraqi people. It's not over for my family. It's not over for the families of the 4500 soldiers who were lost."
Capeheart visited a memorial at Northeastern Illinois University where thousands of dog tags honor those killed in Iraq. One of those tags is for Capeheart's nephew, who died six years ago.
"Anytime you lose a young person, it's devastating because of the potential. He has a fiancé, who as far as I know still considers herself his fiancé, although it's been many years now," Capeheart said.
"I'm glad they're coming out, and I really hope we don't rush into anything too soon," Jim Smiley, who served two tours in Iraq, said.
Though Smiley believes it was a just war, he and fellow Marine Ryan Hulett are left with mixed emotions.
Well, you know, I think that I can speak for soldiers in one regard and that's that, you know, we're happy that we're not going to be going back there. You know, I mean, our families have had to endure us being gone as much as we've, you know, endured being there, so on that level, you know, it's nice to see that it's over.
I know there are some folks that kind of agree with what Senator McCain said today, which is, you know, basically the fact that we're not staying with some level of force may not bode well for the future, but I probably fall in the camp, personally, of - we needed to go. There are a lot of open issues there, and as long as we were there, we were really kind of, you know, the lid on the boiling pot.
You know, and that's the truth. We didn't really fight a nine year war. We fought nine one year wars because, you know, each unit would go there. They would learn what they could in two weeks from whoever they were replacing and they'd spend three months trying to figure out, you know, what the heck was going on.
And about, you know, month three, you start to get your legs under you and you're starting to understand what's going on and you got about six good months of trying to make a difference and then the last three months was spent getting ready for the next unit to come and repeat the cycle.
And I think, in a lot of ways, it made the war last a lot longer than it should have.
Why was it like that? Was that intentional? Was that a sort of a nod to sensibilities back home that people didn't want to see people over there for too long? Why is it? Why was it like that?
PROCTOR: You know, one of the other hats I wear is as a Vietnam historian. I'm working on my Ph.D. right now. And Vietnam - you know, as I kind of say at the beginning of the book, Vietnam really very much played an important part in how the Army approached this war. You know, in Vietnam, you know, the soldiers would go over there on one-year tours, but the units would stay. That created a lot of heartache for the units in the field and also for families back home.
From the time, really, they started this war, they made a decision very early to go in one-year rotations by unit so that you had that unit cohesion and all of the unit's families could take care of each other back home.
For Iraq, you know, Saddam Hussein - you know, he was a brutal dictator and the folks in Iraq do have an opportunity - if they can pull things together and they can settle their arguments without blowing each other up - at making a better future for their country.
On a personal level, I can speak for our unit when we went. Our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bubba Cain, he formed a really close relationship with an Iraqi police battalion commander there, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed al-Fahal. And about halfway through our rotation, Colonel Ahmed was killed by a suicide vest, you know, and that's something that, you know, we - that hit us every bit as hard as losing a soldier, I mean, because we were very much focused on partnering and working with Iraqis.
I think that, you know, those are the little stories that we kind of have to carry with us.
Well, that does kind of lead, though, to the larger question. Was, at the end of the day - and I do recognize, again, that you are still on active duty and you are speaking for yourself - but at the end of the day, was the U.S. presence in Iraq a force for good or not? Did we accomplish anything, I guess, is the question.
Yeah. You know, and I think what I would say is we are not going to know the answer to that question until we actually leave. You know, and I think that's why I have kind of a positive feeling about us going.
Before I let you go, I just have to ask. You know, we often ask our guests, you know, what wisdom they have to pass on and you seem as good a person as any to ask that question. Do you have some wisdom to pass on from this very long experience that you saw up close that was so profound for so - for the country, but with the sacrifice, which was borne by, as we said, a few.
Yeah. Well, I guess, my one chance here to talk to the American electorate, I guess what I would say is be careful what you ask your U.S. military to do because we don't like to lose and we don't like to accept defeat. And so we are going to try and try and try and we're going to try to get as much time as we can to try.
And so, you know, I would hope that everybody would think, you know, be very sober and deliberative before they ask us to engage in war because, you know, as we've seen here and as we continue to see in Afghanistan, you are making a deep, deep, deep commitment.
Lieutenant Colonel Pat Proctor served two tours in Iraq. He's the author of the new book, "Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq." He wants to emphasize once again that the views expressed here are his and his alone. And he was kind enough to join us from member station KANU in Lawrence, Kansas.
Lieutenant Colonel, thank you for joining us. Thank you once again for your service. Thank your family again for their service. Thanks for talking to us.
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