Alex Horton

September thirtieth, twenty twenty-six.

A Washington Post headline today read, "U.S. withdraws forces in Iraq as balance of power shifts to Iran." Journalists Mustafa Salim and Alex Horton explained, "After more than two decades, the deaths of more than two hundred thousand Iraqi civilians and more than forty-five hundred U.S.

troops, the wounding of more than thirty thousand U.S. military personnel, and the cost of more than two point eight trillion dollars, the last of the U.S. military forces in Iraq today pulled out of Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq." In December twenty twenty-one, the military announced it was ending U.S.

combat in Iraq, leaving about twenty-five hundred troops to advise and assist Iraqi forces.

Or, excuse me, more than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly.

The reporting is by Noah Robertson, Warren Strobel, and Alex Horton, and it cites six U.S. officials familiar... with the U.S. Department of Defense's internal casualty accounting data.

Five of the six say there have been at least 22 fatalities since the war began on February 28th.

The Pentagon's public database, the Defense Casualty Analysis System, lists 18.

David Brouillette, the ICE officer with a volatile history who killed Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine in July, was also a recent hire.

On September 15th, Alex Horton, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Maria Sacchetti, and Ted Hesson of The Washington Post reported that ICE has been quietly firing some of those hastily hired.

ICE told The Washington Post reporters, ICE is hiring the best of the best to go after the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens, including drug traffickers, murderers, and pedophiles.

When individuals fall short of that standard, personnel decisions are made.