We can all rest easy now

The U.S. military says all the "surging" soldiers have now arrived in Iraq.

Published June 15, 2007 12:48PM (EDT)

As of today, all of the troops who were to be a part of George W. Bush's "surge" in Iraq have now arrived there.

In the words of the headline writers at the Washington Post, the surge is now "complete." But that's not exactly how the U.S. military is putting it. With "the strategic movement of forces into the theater" now complete, Lt. Col. Christopher Garger tells the Post, "the surge is just starting."

As the Post reports, there are now approximately 165,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the most there has ever been. The military announced the deaths of five more of those soldiers today, bringing the war's toll -- for Americans, anyway -- to approximately 3,519.


By Tim Grieve

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog.

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