The Iraq War is now...

...officially over. Okay, maybe not over over. From an article in the Times (all emphasis mine):

Although the ceremony on Thursday marked the end of the war, the military still has two bases in Iraq and roughly 4,000 troops, including several hundred that attended the ceremony.
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Even after the last two bases are closed and the final American combat troops withdraw from Iraq by Dec. 31 under rules of an agreement with the Baghdad government, a few hundred military personnel and Pentagon civilians will remain, working within the American Embassy as part of an Office of Security Cooperation to assist in arms sales and training.

At least the combat is over.

According to military officials, the remaining troops are still being attacked on a daily basis, mainly by indirect fire attacks on the bases and road side bomb explosions against convoys heading south through Iraq to bases in Kuwait.

But the future looks bright for Iraq, doesn't it?

“Let me be clear: Iraq will be tested in the days ahead — by terrorism, and by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues, by the demands of democracy itself,” [Defense Secretary Leon] Panetta said.

Still, it's nice to be finally done.

But negotiations could resume next year on whether additional American military personnel can return to further assist their Iraqi counterparts. Senior American military officers have made no secret that they see key gaps in Iraq's ability to defend its sovereign soil and even to secure its oil platforms offshore in the Persian Gulf. Air defenses are seen as a critical gap in Iraqi capabilities, but American military officers also see significant shortcomings in Iraq's ability to sustain a military, whether moving food and fuel or servicing the armored vehicles it is inheriting from Americans or the jet-fighters it is buying, and has shortfalls in military engineers, artillery and intelligence, as well. The tenuous security atmosphere in Iraq was underscored by helicopters that hovered over the ceremony, scanning the ground for rocket attacks. Although there is far less violence across Iraq than at the height of the sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, but there are bombings on a nearly daily basis and Americans remain a target of Shiite militants.

The future is uncertain, of course, and Iraq could descend into civil war and chaos, or become a satellite of Iran. But what if things go according to plan, and Iraq evolves into a democratic republic like that other "success" story ... Russia?

Ask yourself this: If we had known that the Iraq War would claim 4,487 American lives and another 32,226 wounded in action and would last almost nine years (so far), would we have gone ahead with it?