FAS has a document that estimates that there are 95,000 contractors in Iraq as of March 2010. And the high point of US troop totals was about 150,000. So, to use nice round numbers, lets say there were 250,000 guys and gals with guns in Iraq.
Obama has withdrawn 100,000, bringing the US official 'non-combat' troop total down to the 50,000 or so troops that the Democrats have been promising to keep in Iraq ever since gaining power in Congress in 2007.
Which means, the total number of people toting guns around Iraq for 'our side' has gone from 250,000 to 150,000. Overall numbers are down 40%. Doesn't sound like much of a 'withdrawal' when you look at it that way. 'Drawdown' might work for how to describe this. But to call it a 'withdrawal', which usually means 'leaving', well, Orwell would be proud of the Democrats for that one.
Oh, and that assumes that the number of contractors stays level, which probably won't be the case since that same google search found other papers which talk about the thousands of tasks that have been identified for handover to 'civilians'. So, that 40% withdrawal that it looks like was done in the numbers above probably isn't as big as it looks either.
Unfortunately, as many men have found out the hard way, 40% doesn't equal total withdrawal. But there have been armies of cigarette smokers and heroin addicts who've prayed to God that they could have ended their withdrawals at 40% and claimed victory.
And, if you voted Democrat because you wanted peace, then you were just totally hosed. Because most of those troops that were 'withdrawn' from Iraq have gone to Afghanistan. Voting for Obama didn't lead to peace. It led to an Iraq that's still broken, but which got a new coat of whitewash for Obama's photo-op. And it led to a bigger and bigger war in Afghanistan, which, oh by the way, has been escalated into a proxy war in Pakistan as well.
Well, Obama can say he delivered 'change'. It was just change in the wrong direction. When Obama said 'change', apparently he meant more and more and more war. Bush's never ending war has now become Obama's never ending war.
From Merriam-Webster:
Definition of WITHDRAWAL
1
a : the act of taking back or away something that has been granted or possessed b : removal from a place of deposit or investment c (1) : the discontinuance of administration or use of a drug (2) : the syndrome of often painful physical and psychological symptoms that follows discontinuance of an addicting drug (a heroin addict going through withdrawal)
2
a : retreat or retirement especially into a more secluded or less exposed place or position b : an operation by which a military force disengages from the enemy c (1) : social or emotional detachment (2) : a pathological retreat from objective reality (as in some schizophrenic states)
3
: retraction, revocation
4
a : the act of drawing someone or something back from or out of a place or position b : coitus interruptus
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