tearing down obamacare. it doesn t surprise me that both the stock market and the business community are where they are. they are beyond the tweets. there are realities that are still playing out here especially on the russia front as the story, not the distractions but the actual, as progress occurs and as we learn more day-by-day, that is still a story that the business community may be a lagging indicator on that. if that story ends up progressing and doing fundamental political damage to the administration, the business community will eventually look up and say, okay, we have a problem here. for now their focus compartmentalized way and what affects our bottom line and for now good for them but the reality may catch up to that. the one caveat i would throw in, mika, i ve talked to the head of a large multinational corporation yesterday and the head of a small american-based business who both said this talk of tariffs and protectionism scares the hell out of them and border tax is
court. we couldn t tolerate that in iraq. we got a bad record. that blackwater incident inflamed passions in iraq. again, i think at the end of the day we had 36,000 killed and wounded there. they have a national police. they have an army. they have got an operating democratic government of sorts. now it s time for us to come out and maintain contact. we will have a massive contact or presence. they have a huge embassy and there will be a couple hundred military officers in the embassy to monitor foreign military sales. time to go. as you pointed out, the countless lives lost and you cannot put a dollar on that. when you look beyond the loss of life, the number, the dollar, $712 billion spent to date on the war in iraq. let me bring in richard engle.
i heard you say something i thought was beautifully put when the news broke and said so many other presidents who wished they could bring troops home for the holidays. here we are at this point. for the troops are all home for the holidays and i assume he doesn t mean halloween, he will be accomplishing something that hasn t happened for nine years. or nearly nine years. it is very significant. people would like to see an end to the iraq war. i watched this war fatigue build in america. many iraqis are nervous. they like the idea of having a small american presence. a trip wire or safeguard that the dark days are not going to return. at the end of the day, a few thousand american trainer who is don t have immunity are not going to prevent a civil war. what are the conditions on the ground? the violence is escalating. it s not promising at all.