Iraq

"Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. " I pluck a paragraph from The New York Times, and for an instant I'm possessed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, aquiver with puzzlement down to my deepest sensibilities. I hold you here, root and all, little paragraph.

Military prosecutors building a case against the 24-year-old Army soldier accused of sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks sought to show Saturday that Pfc. Bradley Manning had access to the secret documents and the ability to share them with the world. Defense attorneys spent little time challenging Manning's retrieval of the information, but instead used the government witnesses to draw a picture of a bright but deeply troubled soldier who was allowed to poke through a trove of top-secret information even after showing clear signs of emotional distress.

- When President Barack Obama went to Fort Bragg the other day to proclaim the end of the nearly nine-year war in Iraq, it was hardly what you would call a traditional victory lap. There was no wild V-I Day to match the V-E and V-J Days that kicked off nationwide jubilation at the end of World War II. The most Mr. Obama could proclaim was that America wished a "welcome home" to the last of the 1.5 million American troops who had served in...

Flying over Iraq this week, Maryland National Guard Col. David W. Carey surveyed miles and miles of emptiness. Where 500 U.S. bases once housed as many as 170,000 troops, the American military footprint had shrunk to two bases and 4,000 soldiers - all with orders to pack up and move out by the end of month. "It's as if you're going to a ghost town," Carey, commander of the 29th Combat Aviation Brigade, said Thursday from Iraq. "I have instructed and encouraged my soldiers to take it all in, take pictures, write stuff down, keep a journal," he said.

Isn't it ironic that our government could afford to subsidize our involvement in Iraq to the tune of $12 billion per month, yet it cannot afford to subsidize the U.S. Postal Service, one of the best-operating federal agencies, at a fraction of that cost ("'Snail mail' could get slower under Postal Service plan," Dec. 6)? Donald T. Torres, Ellicott City

Kayden Hoskins can say "Daddy" now, but she could not when her father, Spc. Tom Hoskins of the Maryland National Guard, left for Iraq in February. The 15-month-old from Havre de Grace has known Daddy mostly as a voice on the phone, a man reading her a book on a DVD sent from far away, a face in a framed photograph that on occasion she kisses. Dressed in a pink winter jacket, brown knitted hat and pink wool gloves, Kayden turned up Saturday morning with her mother, Nicole, and her paternal grandparents to join the crowd of several hundred family members and friends welcoming home troops of the 1729th Forward Support Maintenance Company.

It was most disturbing to read about the recent standoff between local police and the Iraqi Army at a U.S. air base in Kirkuk. Until the Iraqi democracy became more firmly entrenched in order to prevent such problems, civil war or a takeover by Iran or other radical forces remains a threat. The biggest question now is whether President Obama can summon the political will to reverse his earlier decision to withdraw our troops from Iraq by the end of December. Unfortunately, I do not believe this is a move the president will make, which is truly disappointing as it will weaken our image around the world.

Maj. Mark Zinno Citarella was scheduled to spend Thanksgiving in Baghdad. The commander of a public affairs unit in the Maryland National Guard, he figures he would have joined fellow officers on a chow line, serving the holiday meal to enlisted troops. But with the announcement in October that the United States would pull all troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, his unit returned to Baltimore earlier this month. Now he is looking forward to spending the day with loved ones.

Nicholas Walters never served in the military, but he was indelibly shaped by the stories he heard from his father, Sanford Walters, a Towson resident who served in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 as a U.S. Army lieutenant. "He's someone who has always been committed to the veterans," Nicholas said of his dad. "It doesn't matter how old I get, he's someone I'm always going to look up to and respect his opinion and experience. " It troubled Nicholas to hear about the treatment his father got when he returned home and re-entered civilian life during those tumultuous times in the early 1970s.

A Maryland National Guard unit has returned from Iraq ahead of schedule, the first Marylanders to come home since President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of the year. The 17 members of the Baltimore-based 29th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, who were not due back until early next year, are now at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, Maryland guard spokesman Lt. Col. Charles S. Kohler said Wednesday. They are scheduled to return to the Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore in the next few days.