(CNN) -- Early Sunday, as the sun ascended to the winter sky, the very last American convoy made its way down the main highway that connects Iraq and Kuwait. The military called it its final "tactical road march." A series of 110 heavily armored, hulking trucks and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles carrying about 500 soldiers streamed slowly but steadily out of the combat zone. A few minutes before 8 a.m., the metal gate behind the last MRAP closed. With it came to an end a deadly and divisive war that lasted almost nine years, its enormous cost calculated in blood and billions.
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NEW: The withdrawal of U.S. troops stirs conflicting emotions on the streets of Baghdad
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About 500 U.S. soldiers cross into Kuwait, ending almost nine years of war in Iraq
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They are the last U.S. troops in the largest drawdown since the Vietnam War
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They make the journey south from Camp Adder, the U.S. base closest to Kuwaiti border
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On this day, the roads, the bases were in @placeholder hands, the sands in the bags returned to the earth.
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Sunday saw the end of the largest troop drawdown for the United States since @placeholder.
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Those men and women who fought in Iraq may not feel they are leaving behind an unfinished war or returning home to a nation as deeply scarred as it was after years of @placeholder.
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By Thursday, the day the United States formally ended its mission in Iraq with a flag-casing ceremony in @placeholder, under 1,000 people remained there.
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Now a ghost town, the United States gave 110,000 items left at Adder to the @placeholder, a loot worth $76 million, according to the military.
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When the war was at its worst in 2006, @placeholder had 239,000 men and women in uniform stationed in more than 500 bases sprinkled throughout Iraq.
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The quiet @placeholder exit, shrouded in secrecy until it occurred, closes a war that was contentious from the start and cost the nation more than $800 billion.
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It's impossible to know with certainty the number of Iraqis who have died in @placeholder since 2003.
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Even before the last soldiers had left, political crisis was erupting in @placeholder.