Divide over Iraq remains as combat troops return home

President Obama’s declaration last night that combat operations are over in Iraq has even some war veterans divided over the significance of the announcement.

President Obama’s declaration last night that combat operations are over in Iraq has even some war veterans divided over the significance of the announcement.

John Grant is a Vietnam Veteran and a member of the Philadelphia chapter of Veterans For Peace, a national group that tries to raise public awareness of the true costs of war.  He says a significant number of U.S. forces are still in Iraq and potentially in harm’s way.

“It doesn’t seem to me that the war’s in any way over – anymore than it was over when George Bush you know donned his flight suit and landed on the air craft carrier.  That was another public relations moment. That was more cartoonish but this has elements of that same public relations moment of  ‘Let’s Look’ at this as a border here, something’s different.  But it’s not really different.”

But Democratic Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Murphy, the first Iraq war veteran elected to Congress, says the end of combat operations is significant and it will let the U-S focus on Afghanistan.