Military announces teh Surge is over

“For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen.”
— George Orwell, 1984

Another Mission Accomplished Moment for the Bush administration, although we have 147,000 troops left in Iraq now, as opposed to the 130,000 troops before teh Surge:

The U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq that President George W. Bush ordered last year has ended after the last of five additional combat brigades left the country, a U.S. military spokesman said on Tuesday.

The remaining troops from that brigade departed over the weekend, leaving just under 147,000 American soldiers in Iraq, the spokesman said.

“The final elements of the surge brigade have now left, getting out a few days ahead of schedule,” he said.

The U.S. military had 20 combat brigades in Iraq at its peak in 2007, with troop levels around 160,000-170,000.

The current number is well above the 130,000 troops in Iraq when Bush ordered the deployment in January 2007. The Pentagon said last February it expected 140,000 troops to be in Iraq once the five brigade drawdown had finished.

So. . . . teh Surge is supposed to improve conditions in Iraq so our troops could come home. . . and was such a smashing success, we end up with 10-17,000 more than when we started.