President Barack Obama will mark the final withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq next week by addressing returning soldiers at a base in North Carolina, the White House said Thursday.
"As we definitively end America's war in Iraq this month, the president wanted to speak directly to the troops at Fort Bragg and to members of the armed forces and their families everywhere," the White House said.
"The president will speak about the enormous sacrifices and achievements of the brave Americans who served in the Iraq War, and he will speak about the extraordinary milestone of bringing the war in Iraq to an end."
Obama will make the remarks on December 14, and this weekend he will attend the 112th playing of the Army-Navy college football game near Washington.
Fewer than 10,000 US military personnel are still in Iraq, while five bases remain to be handed over.
That is down from a peak of about 170,000 soldiers in 2007, at the height of a US troop surge ordered to rein in rampant sectarian bloodshed.
Obama announced on October 21 that all US troops would leave Iraq by the end of 2011, bringing to a close an almost nine-year war that has left thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
