FORT DRUM, N.Y. — Vice President Joe Biden welcomed home the oft-deployed 10th Mountain Division soldiers from Iraq on Wednesday, praising them for helping turn over security of their sector to Iraqi forces. “You’ve shouldered it and you have done it better than anyone in history,” Biden said to about 2,600 soldiers and family members in a hangar at...
View full sizeVice President Joe Biden stands at attention and Maj. Gen. James L. Terry salutes during the National Anthem. Biden traveled to Fort Drum Wednesday to welcome home the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, which has been returning from Iraq since mid-June. FORT DRUM, N.Y. — Vice President Joe Biden welcomed home the oft-deployed 10th Mountain Division soldiers from Iraq on Wednesday, praising them for helping turn over security of their sector to Iraqi forces.
“You’ve shouldered it and you have done it better than anyone in history,” Biden said to about 2,600 soldiers and family members in a hangar at Fort Drum, the sprawling Army post in northern New York. The troops are part of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, which spent eight months in Iraq.
Biden was joined by his wife, Jill.
As part of the Obama administration’s drawdown of troops in Iraq, the brigade of roughly 3,600 soldiers left eastern Baghdad and neighboring Mada’in Qada to Iraqi troops. On Aug. 31, when combat missions in Iraq are scheduled to end, the administration plans to have 50,000 troops in the country to assist security forces.
And in accordance with a U.S. and Iraqi government agreement, all American forces will leave Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011. “Because of you, we have been able to follow that plan every step of the way, and we will be able to follow it until the last troop comes home in 2011,” he said.
Spc. Robert M. Rieckhoff, 26, was the unit’s only combat-related casualty. He died from a rocket-propelled grenade attack on March 18. Almost 900 of the brigade’s soldiers are still on their way home from an airfield in Iraq, an Army official told the Watertown Daily Times.
One of the Army’s most deployed units, the 2nd Brigade has been to Afghanistan twice and Iraq three times. During its previous deployment to Iraq, 52 members of the brigade were killed.