because of our troops and civilians, and because of the resilience of the iraqi people, iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny. even though many challenges remain. so tonight i am announcing that the american combat mission in iraq has ended. operation iraqi freedom is over and the iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. so what does that mean for u.s. soldiers that are still on the ground? our pentagon correspondent, chris lawrence, is tracking this in iraq. he s at camp victory in baghdad talking with u.s. forces about what the end of the war really means for them. now it is official. american troops who once led missions now assist iraqi forces. what does september 1st mean to you? to me it means we ve done well and we ve worked ourself out of the job which is what we
reporter: we also talked to a number of women, wives, mothers, of some of the deployed troops, asking them how they felt about all of this. is it all really over? what we heard universally is no, of course it is not over, not for the military families who have had those serve. those who have paid the ultimate price, either in possibly having their soldiers killed in action or being seriously wounded. this now, the iraq war, is part of the imprint here at ft. campbell, this is now part of the history of the 101st airborne, part of their history forever. ali? kiran? thank you, barbara. we ll check in with you again later on. the official ceremony marking this transfer is set to take place in just 20 minutes. both vice president biden, as well as defense chief robert gates are in iraq and they ll be there for the handover ceremony. we ll bring it to you live. one of the stories we continue to cover here on cnn is what s going on in pakistan. floodwaters are starting to
good morning to you. glad you are with us on this wednesday, ss tept 1st. i m kiran chetry. i m ali velshi. very pleased to be with you. john roberts is off. i ve been trying to get him for take a day off for a while. here come earl. the hurricane. just downgraded to a category 3. still posing a threat to the east coast of the united states. evacuations are under way along north carolina s outer banks. fema is warning people from the carolinas on up to prepare for the worst. rob marciano is on the beach tracking earl s path for us. president obama makes it official. the war in iraq is over. the pentagon launching operation new dawn which would mean keeping 50,000 troops there to assist iraq s military an advise iraq s military. the vice president, joe biden, as well as defense chief robert gates are in iraq right now. they ll be overseeing the military changing hands. we ll go live to baghdad and
they lost almost 200 troops in the iraq war over the years. and now already of course as you mentioned, they are in the lead in eastern afghanistan. again back in heavy combat. when we came here yesterday we saw some of the physical training going on. the obstacle courses, the repelling and troops still going through all of this training because there are some units here that are headed back to iraq one more time to be part of that support effort of the 50 tou troops over the next several months. we asked a soldier here who had been in iraq, who had been in combat whether he ever could have imagined the day of the iraqi forces taking over. i had confidence in my iraq counterparts. i had a good feeling that they were going to come through positively in the end. we sat beside them and trained with them for over 15 months so, sure. i mean, right, yeah, of course. i saw an end. there s always an end.
there are mo more deployments coming to iraq, some of them told me even when i deploy back home and i m not going to come back here, i m going to keep trying to find out what s going on because right now they ve got some hope that what they did and the men that they saw killed here, it made some sort of difference. if they slide back into chaos, it will be devastating after all they ve seen here and all the friends lost. we ll see how it all plays out today, we re less than an hour away from the official handover. chris lawrence from camp victory in baghdad, thanks. cnn s senior political analyst david gergen says he found president obama s oval office address a little bit perplexing. he ll be here five months from now to explain for why. at 7:50 we ll talk more about the military handover with our panel of experts, former native supreme allied commander, retired george joulwan, and bobby ghosh, and also from kenneth pollack.