Obama highlights ‘huge price’ paid by Americans

Speech leaves ‘future of Iraq’ to its people

President Barack Obama reads his speech to photographers after delivering a primetime televised address marking the the end of combat mission in Iraq from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Susan Walsh/STF/AP Photo President Barack Obama reads his speech to photographers after delivering a primetime televised address marking the the end of combat mission in Iraq from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

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By Jack Torry, Washington Bureau Updated 7:12 AM Wednesday, September 1, 2010

WASHINGTON — Saying it was “time to turn the page’’ on America’s protracted war in Iraq, President Barack Obama last night said the “future of Iraq’’ is in the hands of its people.

In the president’s second Oval Office address, Obama announced the end of a combat mission that began in March 2003.

Since then, 4,427 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq and another 34,268 wounded, shattering the unity that gripped the nation in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people,’’ Obama said in his nationally televised address. “We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home.”

“A transitional force” of about 50,000 U.S. troops will stay in Iraq to serve as advisers to the Iraqi security forces, assist the Iraqi Army in “targeted counter-terrorism missions” and protect American civilians in the country, Obama said.

In a speech delivered earlier in the day before the American Legion National Convention in Milwaukee, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp., said that “over the past several months, we’ve often heard about ending the war in Iraq, but not much about winning the war in Iraq. If we honor what our men and women fought for, we cannot turn our backs now on what they have achieved.”

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