U.S. preparations to close the camp of victory and handed over to Iraqi forces

14/09/2011

Pursuant to the terms of the security agreement
BAGHDAD - Translation - Nadia Mokhtar
Likely to calm hangs on Camp Victory in the days after he suffered a small explosion of the rocket fire. This rule, which is the headquarters of the U.S. military in Iraq were filled with about 46 thousand soldiers and officers.
Within a few months, the U.S. military presence here will be history, tanks, weapons and computers and all its members will be turned away outside the camp and will close the gates and the keys will be handed over to the Iraqi government.
And will remain only 24 thousand soldiers at the base, The means of comfort that made this place the headquarters for most of the American outposts in Iraq would be closed quickly.
Lt. Col. Sean Wilson, a public affairs officer for the Army, "This whole place will become a ghost town, as it gives you a feeling you'll be the last person on earth."
Gen. Bradley Baker, deputy commanding general for support of the 25th Infantry Division, which will be the headquarters of Task Force last post will leave Iraq by October. As it will oversee the closure of the camp from his office at the base.
It is scheduled to shut down Camp Victory, even if Obama won the support of management to develop a plan to keep a few thousand troops in Iraq beyond the end of the year.
The Baker that his task is limited to within the "write the last chapter" of eight years of war.
At the time this rule became the icon of U.S. forces in Iraq, and the first leg of dozens of dignitaries and celebrities for tours by them. Has had two presidents George Bush and Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden, when visiting his son when he was stationed in Iraq. Then came the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in early to announce the amazing progress in the country, as General David Petraeus oversaw the "surge" of troops from this place.
The engraved words of some American soldiers on the walls says "America was here." When the battle was in its infancy and the American troops arrived in 2003 to this place and after a few months, leaders decided they should move it.
Over the years, grew at Camp Victory Base officially good to be a cocoon of tight security, as it housed a hospital and a network of water and electricity, and is surrounded by 27 kilometers of walls and barbed wire. As the American troops can live in conditions far worse in remote areas. Perhaps the most influential business taking place these days in the rule is to demolish many of the monuments in various parts of the forces stationed here who have lost a result of the violence.
Forces stationed says it's hard to talk about the lives that were lost.
These days, watching the Baker buildings in Camp Victory which is discharged slowly and says he feels depressed, as it will hand over the base to the Iraqi government in December in the early of the deadline on 31 December 2011 to leave the forces overall. Bubbles food, gyms see a blank, Of course I remember the thousands of soldiers who were here, and I remember we went out in the missions that we've been doing, we turn off the lights in this place, and we'd be a sense of loss. "
For The Washington Post