By Peter Juul

Soon after President Obama last year fulfilled his pledge to withdraw all American troops from Iraq, conservatives eagerly pounced with baseless declarations the president had somehow “lost” Iraq to Iran and increased “the risks of failure.” Neoconservative analysts Fred and Kim Kagan proclaimed that the withdrawal amounted to “defeat.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal in December, nearly every act of violence or political crisis has been interpreted as evidence that Obama should not have ended the war. Brookings Institute analyst Ken Pollack provided the basic narrative: the withdrawal has caused American influence in Iraq to decline “precipitously;” removed a stick with which to threaten Iraqi “bad guys” (with some commentators lamenting the lack of a stick to shake at Iran and Syria as well); and the military influence U.S. troops provided has not been replaced by political or economic influence. Or as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) put it, Iraq is “unraveling because we didn’t keep a residual force there.”

Last week, Antony Blinken, a deputy assistant to the president and National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden, refuted these allegations of defeat and lost influence in Iraq at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress.

Blinken noted that violence in Iraq remains at record lows despite widely reported terrorist attacks, shootings and other acts of violence. Fewer than 100 weekly security incidents occur today as compared with 1,600 at the height of the violence in 2007 and 2008.

Blinken recalled that the events of a 2007 political crisis in Iraq resemble one that began just after U.S. troops left Iraq in December, noting that in 2007, the U.S. had more than 100,000 troops on the ground there:

“In the end, the main difference between the two episodes was that in 2007/2008, the boycott lasted eight months — at a time when the United States had more than 150,000 troops on the ground. In 2012, we had no troops on the ground, and the boycott ended after less than two months.”

What’s more, Blinken argued, accusations that the United States has lost diplomatic influence in Iraq are baseless. The U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, James Jeffrey, has met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki nine times this year and movements from U.S. diplomatic posts have increased by a third over the last quarter of 2011.

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While U.S. combat troops made their final withdrawal from Iraq on December 18, today marks the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. The war, built on the faulty premise that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, is at a close for the U.S. military. But the impacts of the war for both the U.S. military and the U.S.’s strategic role in the world will be felt for years to come.

In February 2002, George W. Bush adviser Kenneth Adelman infamously wrote that the invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” But wars come at a high financial cost and the Iraq war was no exception. Through FY2011, the war has required $806 billion in federal funding and and total costs have been estimated between $3 – $5 trillion. The humanitarian cost is even more striking. Of the 4,804 coalition military fatalities, the U.S. military suffered 4,486 deaths. The toll on Iraqi civilians has been even higher. Between 105,722 and 115,485 Iraqi civilian deaths have been recorded and 2.8 million Iraqis have found themselves internally displaced by the war.

While the withdrawal from Iraq means an end, or at least a decrease, in some of these costs, the end of the Iraq war permits the U.S. to turn to other security challenges such as: restoring U.S. military readiness; expanding options to deal with other military threats in the Middle East; reducing the financial burden of the U.S. caused by the war; freeing up military resources to fight the Al Qaeda network; and rebalancing overall U.S. national security strategy to deal with real security threats. The withdrawal reflects the administration’s efforts to refocus the country’s national security strategy on the long-term U.S. national security interests of countering nuclear proliferation, worldwide nuclear arsenal reductions and the security of regional partners in Asia and the Middle East.

Returning veterans, as well, find that the costs of war remain high even when their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan have come to an end. Veterans face: growing economic inequalities; a struggling national economy; and a difficult job market. And, according to a whistleblower lawsuit, some of the nation’s biggest banks “defrauded veterans and taxpayers out of hundreds of million of dollars by disguising illegal gees in veterans’ home refinancing loans.”

Veterans also face attacks on their benefits such as GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s proposal to privatize veterans benefits. “The [Veterans of Foreign Wars] doesn’t support privatization of veterans health care,” VFW spokesperson Jerry Newberry told TPM. “This is an issue that seems to come around every election cycle.”

Speaking today, Obama cited the sacrifices made by veterans and called on the country to support its veterans:

Now, our nation reaffirms our commitment to serve veterans of Iraq as well as they served us — to uphold the sacred trust we share with all who have worn the uniform. Our future is brighter for their service, and today, we express our gratitude by saying once more: Welcome home.

A longer version of this post can be viewed in today’s Progress Report.

Today, on the ninth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, President Obama proclaimed March 19 as a day to honor veterans of the Iraq War. Obama released a statement to mark the occasion:

Demonstrating unshakable fortitude and unwavering commitment to duty, our men and women in uniform served tour after tour, fighting block by block to help the Iraqi people seize the chance for a better future. And on December 18, 2011, their mission came to an end.

More than 2 million U.S. troops served in the Iraq war, many of them on multiple deployments. According to CAP analysts Matt Duss and Peter Juul’s updated Iraq War Ledger, nearly 5,000 of them lost their lives, and more than 30,000 suffered injuries. By some estimates, those numbers could be much higher. A Time magazine article highlighted one such toll, traumatic brain injuries:

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), co-chairman of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force, has called Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) “the signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Though no clear statistics exist for TBI, it is estimated that there are between 115,000 and 400,000 veterans who now suffer from at least mild versions of it.

Obama, in his statement, cited the sacrifices made in “wounds not always seen, but forever felt.” He issued a call to support veterans and their families:

Now, our Nation reaffirms our commitment to serve veterans of Iraq as well as they served us — to uphold the sacred trust we share with all who have worn the uniform. Our future is brighter for their service, and today, we express our gratitude by saying once more: Welcome home.

Indeed, the Defense Department is aggressively working on issues around traumatic brain injuries.

The Obama administration is also pushing for other government programs that work toward alleviating the burdens of veterans. Even as the numbers ease, vets of the Iraq and Afghanistan war are disproportionately represented among the unemployed. So the Obama administration has measures specifically targeting them embedded in its wider proposal for a jobs program.

Veteran care has a long way to go — homelessness, for instance, remains rampant among veterans. Creating a National Day of Honor is a good start.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and U.S. defense and intelligence officials have said that they believe that Iran has not made a decision on whether to acquire nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported on Sunday the difficulties that intelligence officials encounter when coming to that conclusion but that officials are still confident that Iran’s leaders have not given the go-ahead:

Publicly and privately, American intelligence officials express confidence in the spy agencies’ assertions. Still, some acknowledge significant intelligence gaps in understanding the intentions of Iran’s leaders and whether they would approve the crucial steps toward engineering a bomb. [...]

American intelligence analysts still believe that the Iranians have not gotten the go-ahead from Ayatollah Khamenei to revive the program.

“That assessment,” said one American official, “holds up really well.”

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported in January that Israeli intelligence (Mossad) concurs with this assessment, and the Times quoted an American official confirming that report:

“Their people ask very hard questions, but Mossad does not disagree with the U.S. on the weapons program,” said one former senior American intelligence official, who, like others for this article, would speak only on the condition of anonymity about classified information. “There is not a lot of dispute between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts.”

And the AP reports today that Israeli intelligence and defense officials have also confirmed this view:

Several senior Israeli officials who spoke in recent days to The Associated Press said Israel has come around to the U.S. view that no final decision to build a bomb has been made by Iran. The officials, who are privy to intelligence and to the discussion about the Iranian program, said this is the prevailing view in the intelligence community, but there are also questions about whether Tehran might be hiding specific bomb making operations.

Yet, Israelis also agree with U.S. intelligence and the IAEA that Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapons capability. The Israeli officials’ concern, the AP reports, “is about allowing the Iranian program to reach the point where there is enough enriched weapons grade material that a bomb could quickly be assembled, within a year.”

President Obama shares these concerns as well. In a recent speech, Obama ruled out a policy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran, warning that an Iranian bomb posed a threat to the U.S. and its allies, as well as the international non-proliferation regime. But at this point the Obama administration believes that a diplomatic end to the crisis is “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff.