American soldiers helped Iraqi troops battle insurgents in downtown Baghdad on Sunday, repelling a major attack in the heart of the capital five days after President Obama declared an end to U.S. combat operations. [...]
"Soldiers living and working at Old MoD provided suppressive fire while IA [Iraqi army] soldiers located the two terrorists that entered the compound," he said in an e-mail. The firefight lasted "a few minutes," he said.
The U.S. military also dispatched helicopters, bomb disposal experts, unmanned aerial drones and other unspecified "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance" assets to the scene of the downtown battle, he said, highlighting the continued dependence of the Iraqi security forces on American expertise and high-tech equipment.
Does this sound to you like "all American combat troops have left Iraq"?
Well, it sounds exactly like what the president talked about in his Oval Office address this past week:
Going forward, a transitional force of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq with a different mission: advising and assisting Iraq’s Security Forces, supporting Iraqi troops in targeted counterterrorism missions, and protecting our civilians. Consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, all U.S. troops will leave by the end of next year.
I hasten to add here that I'd rather all the troops were out now, of course. But let's be fair about our gripes here. The president explicitly discussed missions like this in his address. Though I suspect guys like Greenwald can't wait to re-cast President Obama as Flight Suit Bush.