Little U.S. military influence remains
The U.S. mission in Iraq continues nearly 10 years after the invasion — but it's largely a civilian-run operation.
Fewer than 300 active-duty U.S. troops remain inside Iraq today, defense officials say, a small fraction of the roughly 16,000 employees who work in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest U.S. diplomatic outpost in the world, with an annual operating budget of about $5 billion.
Some of those troops are Marines doing embassy security like those in other capital cities around the globe. Others are helping to provide support for the Iraqi military, with substantial assistance from civilians and contractors.
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Early missteps in Iraq War led to new ideas on how to define, defeat enemy.
In the moonless dark of the Kuwaiti desert, U.S. Army troops cut eight lanes through sand-hill berms built along the Iraq border.
More than 100,000 American and coalition troops amassed on the Kuwaiti side March 20, 2003, with more than 150,000 others on the ground, in the air and at sea surrounding the country, including those aboard five aircraft carriers.
