"We'll be just fine, they'll be just fine," US Vice President Joe Biden told reporters on arrival in Iraq on Monday.
But with political deadlock and serious violence before the US marks the official end to its combat mission in Iraq, there is no immediate end to a US military presence in the country - despite the rhetoric.
The Vice President has flown in to urge the country's leaders to come to an agreement after months of horse-trading over the results of a hung parliament where no party - or coalition, in Iraq's case - won enough votes for an outright majority.
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But he is also there one day before a speech by President Barack Obama which will signal the end of the American military's combat operations. There have been seven years of fighting, which have seen more than 4,400 US soldiers killed. Estimates of civilian deaths since the US invasion in 2003 are as high as 100,000.
The US is reducing its troop numbers to around 50,000, but the violence is at levels not seen in over two years. Around 300 people have been killed in violence monthly in 2010, and July was the most deadly month since May 2008.
But President Obama is trying to stick by a campaign pledge to remove combat troops from Iraq by September 2010.
The US combat mission is not technically ending - but the combat mission in Iraq will be defined as a secondary role behind the mission of being there to 'advise and assist' Iraqi forces.
Behind the public relations, there will still be combat teams making up these advisor/assistor teams, while the potential for taking on insurgents is still high.
"I don't think anybody has declared the end of the war as far as I know," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said recently.
Major Christophe Perrine told AFP last week that US troops "will continue to conduct partnered counter-terrorism operations" in an effort "to help Iraqi security forces maintain pressure on the extremist networks and protect the citizens of Iraq,"
Biden himself told NBC "We'll still have 50,000 battle-tested combat troops in Iraq... going from leading in combat to supporting the Iraqi combat capability."
As The Army Times reports, combat brigades are staying in Iraq under different names.
Under an agreement with the Iraqi government, all US troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.
And while US army figures have expressed a 'stay until the job is done' mentality, Iraqi officers have openly expressed their desire for a prolonged US mission.
"If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020," Lieutenant General Babker Zebari told AFP last week.
President Obama now has just 14 months to assist Iraq in forming a stable government and capable armed forces - if, that is, he wants to head to the polls in 2012 with this key plank of his 07/08 campaign in tact.
