Announcement of US Troop Withdrawal from Iraq

Today, I'm pleased to announce that the last American forces are

leaving Iraq.

It's been a long time with

very bad decision-making that got us involved in this

quagmire

in the first place. It was a quagmire.

Many, many years it lasted, but soon that part of

history will be over. This is a great day for America,

and importantly,

we leave with Iraq having a wonderful new prime minister,

Ali Al-Zaidi.

Fantastic guy, friend of mine,

and somebody I supported from the very beginning, and I fully

endorsed. He was running for election.

He wasn't given even a chance, and I endorsed him.

Politicked for him a little bit, and he ended up winning in a

virtual landslide, beating somebody that was not a good person, in my opinion.

So I'm very proud of him, and hopefully he's gonna do a fantastic

job.

But he won the election, and it was very unexpected.

It was a very big thing,

and he did so in landslide

order.

Launched in twenty-oh-three under the presidency of George

W. Bush

and continued under the administration of Barack Hussein

Obama. Have you heard of him?

Boo.

In twenty-fourteen,

and then further continued under

Sleepy Joe Biden.

Operation Inherent Resolve, which is what they called it,

ends in twenty twenty-six under the leadership of President Donald

J. Trump. We're getting the hell out of there.

So this day is a victory for the United States.

It's a victory for Iraq

and a decisive victory over ISIS, which has been completely

decimated, which is the reason we went in there in

the first place.

I decimated them

and took them out in my first administration,

so I don't know what took them so long to be making the announcement that I'm

making today. But it was all about ISIS at the time.

Should have never been allowed to form. It did form. We took it out.

Others weren't able to do so.

But, uh,

that's just a very big thing. And just to go on just a little bit about

it,

uh, I have to make some comparisons.

Unlike Afghanistan, where much military equipment and

everything else was left behind and thirteen warriors

lie dead. I know the families of those

incredible young people. Got to know them very well over the last

couple of years. What happened to those--

to their children should never have been allowed to happen.

With many badly wounded, so many badly...

Forty-eight were so badly wounded, they never get mentioned.

I mention them all the time. Badly wounded.

No legs, in some cases, arms, face.

This orderly departure of coalition forces and equipment from

Erbil Air Base marks the end of a very expensive

excursion into hell.

And again, we took all of our equipment. I said, "Take a little longer.

Take every one." We left all of the equipment, if you remember,

in Afghanistan. Everything was left behind.

We, we left-- I said, "I want every screw taken.

"If there's a screw lying on the ground, take it.

If we have a canvas tent, take it."

We took everything. I set a clear mission, gave our

commanders the tools to finish it, and refused to let a

temporary presence become a permanent one.

A lot of people wanted us to be permanently there.

I had a choice to stay or to leave and felt, without question,

that it was time for America to go home.

Yeah. Woo.

Prime Minister, Prime

Minister Al-Zaidi is outstanding and will hopefully be able to handle

things

very well. We came to fight a caliphate, and there is

no longer a caliphate, so we are going home indeed.