KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST (voice-over):  Two thousand six hundred and sixty-six days since President Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq.  Two thousand seven hundred and eight days since American forces invaded Iraq.

At this hour, American combat forces are leaving Iraq.

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RICHARD ENGEL, NBC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT:  I think we‘re coming right up to the Kuwaiti border now.

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OLBERMANN:  This is a special edition of COUNTDOWN.

Chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, in a world exclusive, embedded with, reporting live from the last convoy of American combat troops as it leaves Iraq via the Kuwait border.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  You‘re watching the end of an era of the American military.

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OLBERMANN:  With Rachel Maddow inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, and Chris Matthews, Lawrence O‘Donnell, Eugene Robinson, Howard Fineman, Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon, retired General Paul Eaton, retired Colonel Jack Jacobs, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and former weapons inspector Charles Duelfer.

From Baghdad, from the Iraq-Kuwait border, from Washington, from New York-this is COUNTDOWN‘s special continuing live coverage of the end of America‘s Iraq combat mission.

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OLBERMANN:  Good evening again from New York.  Thus, at the top of hour here, we begin a special edition of COUNTDOWN as we continue our breaking news coverage of the last combat troops leaving Iraq.

Our embedded correspondent, Richard Engel, has been reporting live from the convoy-the only reporter to do-so do, as the troops approach that border and crossing it and emptying their weapons as they did.  A remarkable moment that at least symbolically closes an important chapter in a conflict which is stretched on for more than seven years, as well as 4,415 in uniform who did not get this chance to leave Iraq alive.

We‘ll be returning to Richard in a few moments live to see the status of the last transfer of those troops across the border into Kuwait.  They‘ve been there since about 7:23 Eastern Time this evening at that border crossing, the last 440 troops in the 4^th Stryker Brigade.  We‘ll also have our thoughts and analysis of our various analysts and hosts throughout the evening and in particular, in this next special hour of COUNTDOWN.

And we‘ll turn first to retired Major General Paul Eaton.

General, thanks for your time tonight.

MAJ. GEN. PAUL EATON (RET.), U.S. ARMY:  Hey, Keith.  Thank you very much for having us on.

OLBERMANN:  All right.  We‘ll start off with the-with the emotions and the visceral sense that you have seen, the symbolism of the last brave men and women leaving Iraq safely.

EATON:  Well, it‘s-there is a lot of emotion, particularly if you‘ve participated or your family has participated in the Iraq war, which I did personally and as well, one of my sons.  So, this is a great moment and I‘m thrilled to see it.

OLBERMANN:  I don‘t know how to put this exactly.  What of this has been-has been worth it?  Separating from the equation, the bravery, the comradeship, the work, the incredible courage of the men and women who have fought there, what has been worth it of this war?

EATON:  Keith, I struggle with that.  The wisdom of going there, I will leave to the historians.  It was a decision on the part of a three-man group to get after this thing.  And I‘ll let the historians work that through.  It‘s going to take a number of years to figure that out.

The-what good has come of it?  The Armed Forces of the United States right now are better than they‘ve been in a long time.  It‘s-the camaraderie that you mentioned, and the cohesion of the ground forces is over the top.

We have paid a huge price in blood and national resources to get to where we are right now.  And the irony is, that what we really hope for is a stable and Democratic Iraq, and that will probably bear out in the years ahead, and we‘ll have a great deal to do with how we view the decision to go in there.

OLBERMANN:  I‘m going to join-I have Chris Matthews join our discussion at this point-Chris.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, "HARDBALL" HOST:  General, I guess that‘s a tough question for the fighting men and women which is: can you fight a war with such an indeterminate ending?

General Eisenhower, I was reading today, didn‘t believe in limited wars.  Well, we would have a hard time in this era because he believed in wars of annihilation where you went to Berlin or you went to Tokyo and that was the end of it.  And the end of the enemy, they were at your command.  But now, we fight wars in like Korea which Eisenhower ended where he just said the war is over.  We‘ve done what we can do.

Here, you have a strange war where the mission of the last three years was to create political settlement in Baghdad.  It hasn‘t actually been achieved and yet, the United States said, well, our timetable has been reached.  We‘re leaving.  What does that do to the morale of the fighting person to know that sometime you have to just leave after you‘ve done your best?

EATON:  The sophistication of the Armed Forces of the United States at every rank level is far greater than a lot of people would seem to think-particularly the sophistication of our very young soldiers.

MATTHEWS:  Right.

EATON:  So, they wax pretty philosophical on this.  And they‘ve got a very good picture of what they were sent to do and the limits of the power that they can bring to bear.  I‘m reading Andrew Bacevich‘s book right now, "Power Rules."  The-an analysis of the semi-war state the United States has been in for, well, since World War II.  And it is a very illustrative book and a recommended read.

MATTHEWS:  But I guess there‘s a question-I guess the heart of the question is: is there somewhere between now where we recognize what we have debates in this country, then we have elections, then people like George W.  Bush declare a war and decide on a war and sell it to the Congress and to some of the American people, then we have a new election where a president, like Barack Obama, comes in and says this is enough?  And somewhere in there, you face the notion of a limited war or war where you change your mind about its potential conclusion.

But how do you avoid an Orwellian situation where you‘re just always fighting, with the war just goes on and on and on, and it‘s always sold as a continuing war that has to be.  I mean, that‘s not what you‘re saying, is it?  That we would have to face a future like that?

EATON:  Chris, this book that I just mentioned-really, the Iraq war, the Afghan war, are logical progressions from the evolution of a United States of America on a perpetual war footing since the Second World War.  And we are predisposed to this kind of activity.  And have been for the last half century.

The real work is to take a hard look at our foreign policy, to take a hard look at how we wish to engage in the future.  And whether or not we wish to have a militarized foreign policy or whether we wish to reestablish the State Department-

MATTHEWS:  Right.

EATON:  -- as a primary vehicle to move forward in the world.

OLBERMANN:  Sure.

MATTHEWS:  Well, that‘s-OK, go ahead, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  I think the question there is so lively, which is: are we always going to be at war?  Or can we find a leadership which finds a civilian or a diplomatic solution more often than not?

EATON:  The real effort is to bring the United States Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy back into their core competency, and that is to secure our lines of communication, both air and sea, and to fight and win the nation‘s wars where our vital interests are at stake.

MATTHEWS:  Right.

EATON:  And the role of government is to provide for the security of the governed.  And it‘s not to embark upon preemptive warfare to change the landscape.  And we‘ve had other presidents besides President Bush embarked upon similar ventures.

OLBERMANN:  Surely, General, and we discussed this at many points in the last several years, the problem is as much government that‘s seek to do that, and politician that‘s seek to do that as a public that has been willing to or certainly was willing for a long time with this war in particular, to accept the premise of-we need another six months to see how the latest change from X to Y, or from Y back to X, will take-will improve the situation.  There‘s always been a request for another six months in this process.

How do you-and I know it‘s a huge question to ask-but how do you work against that kind of mindset when something like that has been accepted, and what we‘re watching essentially end tonight is testimony to that?

EATON:  There is a very strong pressure, particularly on Democratic presidents, Democratic Party presidents, to be tough in the face of foreign policy challenges.  And I go back to Richard Nixon who elected as a Republican president, chose to make the very hard decision to end the Vietnam War.  He did it inelegantly.  But he did it.

And I expect the same strength of character with President Barack Obama to make the very hard calls that he‘s going to have to make in Afghanistan that he has made in Iraq.

OLBERMANN:  Let‘s go back on the ground to the international zone in Baghdad for a question from Rachel Maddow-Rachel.

RACHEL MADDOW, "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" HOST:  Thanks, Keith.

And thanks, General Eaton.  Thinking back on the large scale Defense Department up-scaling that we‘ve seen since 9/11, since 2001, the Pentagon budget is something like doubled.  A lot of what the U.S. was concerned about when it became clear the Iraq war was going to be a long war, was the strain on the U.S. military-not only U.S. forces being killed and being injured here, but also the military itself being injured here-the incredible demands that we were putting on our Armed Forces to fight not one but two wars, to go through an incredible amount of equipment, and essentially to be stretched-to be stretched very thin.

So, we‘ve both seen the military be put through a lot and the military funded to a degree that we never could have imagined in August of 2001.  Looking back now to how much that budget has gone up.

What would you say is the health of the U.S. military right now as a fighting force, given what they‘ve been through?

EATON:  The cost to reset the force, the equipment of the force, is one question.  The health of the Armed Forces, the men and women who go forth and execute the missions of the commander-in-chief-my view into those forces, and I get to see it at several ranks, and on active duty as well as those who are coming out of the military.  And the strength of character, and the strength of commitment of the Armed Forces of the United States, again, at every rank is over the top superb.

So, I have-I have absolute faith in the resilience of the Armed Forces in the face of some troubling statistics that we‘ve had on suicides and family events.  The cost to the taxpayer to reset the ground forces from an equipment perspective, I can‘t fathom.  But it‘s-it‘s going to be very, very high.

OLBERMANN:  We‘ll continue here.  Jack Jacobs has a point to make-

General Jack?

COL. JACK JACOBS, RET., U.S. ARMY:  Yes, along those lines is the size of the force, General Eaton raised the notion that the military-the psyche of the military is a superb condition, and it is.  But we have to keep one thing in mind.  We‘ve got a country of 310 million people.  And we‘ve got an armed force which on a per capita basis is one-third the size of the Iraqi armed force.

We fought this war, and the war in Afghanistan, relying not necessarily wholly on active duty people-people who volunteered to be in the active duty military, but on our citizen soldiers, reserve and the National Guard, who repeatedly went back to Southwest Asia, back on-back to Southwest Asia and back.

I talked to one sergeant who lost her leg and was in the National Guard, was on her third tour when she lost a leg.

We can‘t operate a modern country using the military instrument to any extent, even a limited extent, relying so heavily on people who are citizen soldiers to the extent that we have in this war.  And if we learned anything-and I hope we learned a lot of lessons-it is that question can‘t do that again.

OLBERMANN:  And, General, concomitant with that, we essentially had a backdoor draft of many of these people.  They were-they did not-they thought they were done and they turned out not to be.  That was another lesson.  Address Jack‘s point.

EATON:  He is absolutely correct.  I go back to a conversation that I had in the meeting during the campaign with President Clinton.  And he was thinking back and he made the comment, "Perhaps I drew the active forces down too much."  And I told him that, "Sir," I was a colonel during that period, "And your Armed Forces matched your foreign policy, appetite for the use of force."

And I would-I would say that Colonel Jacobs‘ point is, otherwise stated, let‘s have an armed force that is, say, matched for the foreign policy appetite of the country.

OLBERMANN:  Lawrence O‘Donnell?

LAWRENCE O‘DONNELL, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST:  General, I‘d like to ask you what you think the 50,000 troops who‘ve been left behind will be facing in Iraq.

And in that question, I‘d like the review for the audience what the Defense Department says they will be doing.  They say it will be force protection, which is providing security for State Department officials and for others who are there; the training and equipping function, helping to train the Iraqi military.

The other component-and I‘m going to quote the Defense Department‘s statement yesterday on this-the other component is, quote, "continued, partnered counterterrorism missions."

Now, the military‘s official name for tonight‘s exit mission is "The Last Patrol."  But when I read these functions that the military will still have in Iraq, especially that last one, "continued partnered counterterrorism missions," was this really the last patrol?

EATON:  It‘s the last of a-and you rightfully point out the-that last mission because we see in Yemen and Somalia, as well as Afghanistan, and parts that I‘m not privy to, a continued special forces approach to counterterrorism.  That with a robust intelligence network, that we will continue to locate and kill enemies actively involved against the United States.

So, like those other countries, I expect to see an enduring presence and activity on the part of special operating forces while our conventionally operating forces have been pulled offline.

OLBERMANN:  Retired General Paul Eaton-it‘s always a pleasure and we gain so much from your insights, sir.  Thank you kindly for sharing so much of your time with us this evening.

EATON:  Thank you, Keith, very much.