Iraq War comes to a quiet end ( DXS LMT BA NOC UTX LLL GD GR ) (by Christopher Hinton)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. conflict with Iraq came to an official end Thursday during a ceremony in Baghdad with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. About 4,000 troops remaining in Iraq will be withdrawn by the end of the year, though hundreds of armed U.S. private-security contractors hired through the State Department are expected to remain. The near nine-year conflict cost the U.S. more than $800 billion. It also killed about 4,448 American troops and more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians, according to icasualties.org, and it displaced millions. The conflict with Iraq extends back to 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The U.S. and an international coalition drove out the Iraqi army in 1991, and then enforced a more than decade-long blockade of Iraq that wrecked the country's infrastructure.