Andrew Testa / Panos Pictures for NBC News

Father Nizar Semaan gives Holy Communion at Holy Trinity church in the Brook Green area of London.

LONDON -- Rana stepped out of church in Baghdad in December 2006 to find an envelope wedged against her car windshield. Inside was a bullet -- a message that meant she and her family were next on an assassin’s list. 

They fled the city the next day, leaving behind a business, a home -- everything.  

"I didn't like Saddam Hussein, but he didn't bother the Christians," said Rana, 29, after a church service in London. "He was a dictator. When he went, the gangs came from everywhere."

Rana isn’t alone: Bombings, kidnappings and generalized violence unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Hussein caused hundreds of thousands of Christians to flee their homeland.

While there is no centralized source of information on the number of Christians who have left Iraq, it is estimated that there were 2 million there in the 1990s. That number has fallen to between 200,000 to 500,000 today, according to church leaders.

 Rana, who like others interviewed would not give her last name because of fear for the safety of relatives still in Iraq, is now part of a congregation that worships at Holy Trinity Brook Green, a Roman Catholic church in West London.

The congregants -- Syriac Catholics whose services are conducted in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus -- are part of the estimated 2,500 Iraqi Christians thought to live in the U.K. 

In a pew near Rana sat Wasseem, a 26-year-old who arrived in the U.K. five months ago. The murder of his friend Rariq haunts him, Wasseem said through a translator. Rariq, also a Christian, was a driver for American forces in Baghdad and was kidnapped on his way to meet Wasseem. Rariq’s dismembered body was returned to his family five days later.

Wasseem received a handwritten death threat himself. Terrified, he decided to stay in his village in northern Iraq, he said. While safe, the predominantly Christian area offered no jobs, and he soon fled the country.

Extremists haven't targeted only individual Christians and their families. On Oct. 31, 2010, gunmen stormed Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad during Sunday Mass, taking more than a hundred hostages. When security forces tried to free those held, the attackers detonated explosives. At least 58 people were killed, including two priests.

Related video: Baghdad church siege has bloody end  

A singer at Holy Trinity Brook Green lost her father in the bombing. Rev. Nizar Semaan, chaplain to the Syriac Catholic  community in the U.K., knew both of the murdered priests well. 

"They were very courageous people. It is not easy to do their job. And not easy to be a martyr," he said. 

Andrew Testa / Panos Pictures for NBC News

Iraqi children make up the choir at the London church.

Semaan’s support for Christians who have fled to the U.K. goes beyond the spiritual. 

"I try to help them find accommodation, I ask people to help in any way," he said.  "I call people to help them find a job."

Semaan said that he and his fellow priests refused to contemplate the extinction of the Christian community in Iraq, despite its falling numbers.

"Christianity can flourish again. It will grow back as an important part of the region," he said. 

Warina, who also attends Mass at Holy Trinity, is more downbeat. Like many of her fellow worshipers, she said life for Christians was better under Saddam Hussein.

"Our neighbors were Muslims. Our relations were friendly. We would visit them," said the dentist who fled Iraq in 2007. "Now it is just fighting. There are lots of churches and monasteries and places to worship in Baghdad -- but they are all empty."

"We love Iraq. It's our country, the origin of Christianity. But it is not safe," she added.

As Christians, Warina said, they are doubly vulnerable -- not only are they a minority, but they are perceived by some as having colluded with the invading American forces.

"After Saddam's death, people turned on Christians because they think the Christians encouraged the Americans to come to Iraq. Month after month, more and more are killed," she said.

Still, Semaan said he thinks a newly elected Pope Francis will act to support his threatened community.

"The pope will see the persecution and he will take care of us. He will not forget the church in the Middle East," Semaan said. "He is not a politician and he has no army, but he has good will and can encourage dialogue and maybe this can bring about a better situation."

Besides, Iraq needs its Christians, Semaan added.

"The Middle East without Christians would be a country without light," he said. "The future would be very dark." 

Related:

Did Iraq War accomplish what Bush vowed?

10 years after invasion, US troops ask: 'Was it worth it?'

Then and now: Rephotography shows Iraqi sites 10 years after Saddam

Inspector General's report

This bridge across the Tigris River was destroyed by U.S. and allied warplanes in 2003. Rebuilding it proved problematic -- and extremely expensive.

After U.S. and allied warplanes destroyed a key bridge carrying 15 oil and gas pipelines in northern Iraq during the 2003 conflict there, officials in Washington and Baghdad made its postwar reconstruction a top priority. But instead of spending two months to rebuild the span over the Tigris River at an estimated cost of $5 million, they decided for security reasons to bury the pipelines beneath it, at an estimated cost more than five times greater.

What ultimately happened there tells the story — in a microcosm — of a substantial chunk of the massive nine-year U.S. effort to reconstruct Iraq, the second-largest such endeavor in history (only the U.S. investment in Afghanistan has been larger).

Studies conducted before the digging of the new pipelines started showed that the soil was too sandy, but neither the Army Corps of Engineers overseeing the effort nor the main contractor at the site, Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), heeded the warning. As a result, “tens of millions of dollars (were) wasted on churning sand” without making any headway, as Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart W. Bowen Jr., described it in his recently published final report on the U.S. occupation.

By the time the digging effort was halted, and the old bridge and piping repaired — more than three years later — the bill had reached more than $100 million. “Because of the nature of the original contract, the government was unable to recover any of the money wasted on this project,” Bowen said. More than $1.5 billion in oil revenues may have been lost as a result of the delays. KBR did not respond to a request for comment.

The episode is emblematic of the contracting abuses and mismanagement that wasted at least $8 billion of the $60 billion spent by Washington on Iraq’s postwar recovery, under the guidance of what Bowen describes in his report as “adhocracy” largely controlled by the U.S. military — a structure that never “coalesced into a coherent whole” and often failed to achieve its aims.

With the U.S. military now gone from Iraq, and with the 10th anniversary of the invasion, Bowen’s retrospective summary of his audits offers useful insights into how well the U.S. government managed its occupation and the legacy it left behind. The mostly downbeat tone is set early, when the report summarizes final interviews Bowen conducted with 44 top U.S. and Iraq officials, who addressed the simple question of whether the decade-long project left Iraq in better shape.

Most of the Americans he spoke to -- including appointees of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama -- were rueful, noting multiple miscalculations, poor planning, disorganization in Washington, and inadequate consultation with Iraqis. James Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq from 2010 to 2012, told Bowen that “the U.S. reconstruction money used to build up Iraq was not effective. ... We didn’t get much in return.”

Related: Iraq, 10 years on: Did invasion bring 'hope and progress' to millions as Bush vowed?

Only retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq before shifting to Afghanistan and then briefly directing the CIA, was ebullient, claiming the effort had brought “colossal benefits to Iraq.”

Virtually every senior Iraqi, in sharp contrast, said the decade-long U.S. occupation was beset by huge misspending and waste, and had accomplished little. The biggest footprint Americans left behind, most of these Iraqi officials said, was more corruption and widespread money laundering. Such a huge investment “could have brought great change in Iraq,” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said, but the gains were often “lost.”

Billions here, billions there
The bill for Iraq is hard to divide into neat categories, but in rough terms: Washington spent more than $15 billion to try and improve Iraq’s power and water supply, revive its schools and repair its roads and housing; it spent another $9 billion on health care, law enforcement, and humanitarian assistance; it spent $20 billion training and re-equipping Iraqi security forces; it spent roughly $8 billion to enhance the rule of law and battle narcotics; and it spent $5 billion helping to prop up the economy.

Bowen’s interviews with influential Iraqis reveal, however, that they don’t seem to have noticed all this investment or don’t seem grateful. One reason might be that households — as recently as 2011 — still got an average of only 7.6 hours of electricity a day, and a sixth of Iraq’s citizens lacked access to potable drinking water for more than two hours a day.

Both U.S. and Iraqi officials complained to Bowen that not enough was done during the occupation to stem corruption. An Iraqi government watchdog agency, the Board of Supreme Audit, noted last year that $800 million in profits from illicit activities was being transferred out of Iraq each week, effectively stripping $40 billion annually from the economy, according to Bowen’s report.

There are exceptions to the tales of fraud and waste. A State Department-funded childhood vaccination program helped cut the national infant mortality rate by nearly three-quarters. The Baghdad rail station was repaired on time and under budget. And telecommunications repairs have enabled mobile phone use to climb from 80,000 to 23 million subscribers.

But U.S. dreams of fostering a thriving, Western-style economy in the Middle East have not been realized. Almost all of Iraq’s gains have come from oil production, which is now roughly a third greater than it was in 2003. The oil industry is not a big employer, however, and “Iraq is still far from having a vibrant, market-based private sector,” Bowen reports.

Moreover, its military still “lacks critical capabilities in logistics, intelligence,” and repair, Bowen’s report states. It cannot defend its airspace or its coastline, and is weak in counterterrorism.

Parceling blame
Bowen’s report indirectly assigns blame for mismanaging the endeavor to the Bush White House, which had the authority to force U.S. government agencies to coordinate their work but failed to exercise it. Instead, he points out, no single office was assigned to lead the effort, making "stovepiping" — a myriad of narrowly focused efforts — “the apt descriptor,” the report said.

But the largest responsibility for the failures lies generally at the Pentagon and particularly in the Army, according to the report. The Defense Department “held decisive sway over $45 billion (87 percent) of the roughly $52 billion allocated to the major rebuilding funds that supported Iraq’s reconstruction.”

The agencies formally charged with dispensing foreign aid — the State Department and the Agency for International Development — played only a minor role in these accounting shortfalls, because they spent less than a fifth of the reconstruction funds. “State’s role in managing the reconstruction … ebbed and flowed in cycles driven by the personalities involved, with State frequently on the losing end of arguments,” Bowen reports.

It was the Pentagon that failed to plan “for a lengthy occupation or a large relief and reconstruction program,” Bowen noted, under the tutelage of a defense secretary — Donald Rumsfeld — who famously said, “If you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense from 2001 to 2006, defended the war itself in a 2011 memoir, saying that its central element -- Saddam Hussein's removal -- made the Middle East a safer region. But he blamed other officials for many of the problems, saying that military officials did not request more troops and that civilian managers of the occupation stoked Iraqi nationalism by not giving local citizens enough power.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a report last June on "lessons learned" in Iraq, acknowledged that "operations during the first half of the decade were often marked by numerous missteps and challenges as the U.S. government and military applied a strategy and force suited for a different threat and environment." But it said the military adapted its work and had more success in the second half of the decade. 

Other defense officials have acknowledged that a substantial chunk of the Pentagon’s spending in Iraq went to repair the looting and other damage done by Iraqis in the immediate period after the war ended, when U.S. troops were not tasked with keeping order. They also have confirmed that billions of dollars were diverted from civil reconstruction to security efforts after the military abuses at Abu Ghraib prison helped stoke widespread hostility to the U.S. occupation.

It was the Pentagon that opened a contracting office in Baghdad that Bowen said was chronically understaffed — despite the Defense Department's peak presence in Iraq of more than 170,000 personnel. The office nonetheless shoveled money out the door at such a high rate and with so little accountability that by 2005, the U.S. embassy there was incapable of matching “projects with the contracts that funded them,” according to Bowen’s report.

Average U.S. expenditures for Iraqi reconstruction in 2005, for example, were more than $25 million a day. When Bowen’s auditors went looking for documents supporting billions of dollars of fund transfers to the Iraqi government in that period, they discovered the paperwork was “largely missing.”

Pentagon-funded fuel purchases were particularly problematic: When Bowen’s office asked to see a log book documenting $1.3 billion in fuel purchases by the Coalition Provisional Authority, “the log book could not be found.” Defense officials also could not produce documents supporting their expenditure of over $100 million in cash found in a vault at the Republican Palace, the gilded Hussein mansion that became a headquarters of the occupation.

In the crisis atmosphere pervading the reconstruction effort for most of the decade, Pentagon contracts were often open-ended, with vague demands and no precise deadlines. Although the contracts had provisions allowing their conversion to fixed-price awards after some of the work was completed, “the government failed to exercise these options,” Bowen’s report said.

A special system of urgent payments by military commanders — created to tamp down the Iraqi insurgency and known as the Commander’s Emergency Response Program — dispensed $4 billion without any formal oversight. Military officials say it worked well, at least at the outset, but no Defense Department office assembled a comprehensive picture of how the money was spent. As a result, Bowen calls the claims of success “suspect.”

Overcharging
Weak oversight predictably led to rampant overcharging. A firm based in Dubai managed to keep around $4 billion in Pentagon construction contracts, for example, despite routinely marking up the price of switches and plumbing parts between 3,000 and 12,000 percent, according to an audit Bowen conducted in 2011. Kellogg Brown and Root was among a handful of large contractors that kept winning U.S. funds, despite repeated claims by the Pentagon and others of overcharging by the firm and its subcontractors. The firm has said it conducted its work with “integrity, transparency, accountability, and discipline.”

Some military officers and civilian defense officials participated in the looting. A probe by Bowen’s office of the American official overseeing early reconstruction in Hilla, for example, yielded evidence of widespread bribes, bid-rigging, money laundering, kickbacks and illegal gifts in a scheme that included four colonels, who all got prison terms. An Army major who was the main contracting official at a base in Kuwait oversaw fraud in the purchase of bottled water and warehouse construction that involved 21 others.

Perhaps Bowen’s most depressing conclusion is that the U.S. government is no better prepared for reconstruction work in other countries than it was in 2002. No single government office has responsibility for such operations, he notes, and no tracking system has been established to help oversee related contracting.

Bowen recommends that the Obama administration create a new U.S. office for “contingency operations,” and even includes draft legislation on it in his report. But in an austere fiscal climate, and with Obama’s team set against future military occupations, hopes for reform appear scant.

Clearly a number of lawmakers "have signed on to this solution," said Bowen's deputy Glenn D. Furbish, a top auditor in SIGIR for the past eight years. "Hopefully, we will not get into these things again ... [and] I hope people pay attention to what he has to say ... But it is questionable whether these [reforms] are going to go forward. Given the current political environment, I am not particularly optimistic."

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Courtesy IAVA

Former U.S. Marine Sergeant Derek Coy says he still struggles "both mentally and physically, with the toll it took on me and countless others do as well."

Derek Coy hails from Baytown, Texas, and could be a poster child for American veterans of the war in Iraq as they look back and ask: "Was it all worth it?" 

A former U.S. Marine sergeant based in the volatile Anbar province at the height of the conflict, Coy is proud of his service and believes the "invaluable tools" he gained as a Marine will ultimately help him succeed in life.

But seven years since he left Iraq, he’s fighting a different battle — against anxiety, depression and emotional numbness — the effects of post-traumatic stress. 

"I still struggle, both mentally and physically, with the toll it took on me and countless others do as well," he said.

Tuesday will mark 10 years since the "shock and awe" invasion and more than a year since the last company of U.S. troops left Iraq. But only about 4 in 10 Americans who fought there — according to a Pew Research Center poll — believe the reasons for going to war justified the loss in blood and treasure.

Almost 4,500 U.S. troops were killed and more than 32,000 wounded, including thousands with critical brain and spinal injuries.  Estimates of the number of Iraqi civilian fatalities are staggering, ranging from 100,000 to 600,000.

The monetary cost could exceed $3 trillion.

While the war in Iraq has ended, the sacrifice for vets continues back in a civilian world they often find "foreign" and isolating.

Ann Weeby, a native of Boyne City, Michigan, was deployed at the beginning of the war, attached to the 101st Airborne under then-Major General David Petraeus , in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

"Our goal was to find weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein," she said.

"After WMDs were not found and Saddam was captured, I didn’t expect [such a] prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq," she added.

As the only person her family and friends know who fought in the war, Weeby tries to educate them about the scourges of depression and suicide that U.S. vets face after Iraq. 

"American troops are suffering, and in some cases dying, because a Veterans Affairs' claims backlog is preventing them from getting [mental] health care. Twenty-two U.S. veterans commit suicide every day!" Weeby said, citing a troubling statistic recently published by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Courtesy IAVA

Ann Weeby, who was attached to the 101st Airborne, went in to look for WMDs and Saddam Hussein. "I didn't expect [such a] prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq," she said.

'The cost was high'
When Leon Panetta, then secretary of defense, addressed U.S. troops in Baghdad before they pulled out of Iraq, he argued that their core mission had been accomplished.

"To be sure, the cost was high," he said. "But those lives were not lost in vain. They gave birth to an independent, free, and sovereign Iraq."

Today, however, Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, heads what looks more like an authoritarian regime, propped up by a coercive secret service.

Toby Dodge, an analyst at U.K.-based think tank Chatham House, claimed Iraq had morphed into a pro-Iran police state, where Sunni gunmen and al Qaeda’s suicide bombers seem to strike at will, killing hundreds each week. 

His conclusion: 10 years after regime change in Iraq, little has changed.

"The lives of ordinary Iraqis, in terms of the relationship to their state and their economy, are comparable to the situation they faced in the country before regime change," he said in a report written for Chatham House.

Many Iraq War veterans admit they were fighting more for their battle buddies than for any "island of democracy" in the Arab world.

Courtesy IAVA

Robert Contreras, who had two tours of duty in Iraq, returned to California to finish a college degree, where he has struggled to relate to other students. "The most common question I get … is if I've ever killed someone," he said.

Robert Contreras, from Sylmar, California, left the military after 10 years in the Navy, including two tours of duty in Iraq, and returned to California to finish a college degree.

"Personally, I was not there fighting for Iraq," he said when asked if the war was won or lost.

"I was there to protect those who served alongside me to the best of my abilities," he said.

He’s struggled to relate to his student peers who know little about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The most common question I get … is if I’ve ever killed someone," he said.

Contreras also developed symptoms of PTSD. "I was anxious in crowded places and unable to feel at ease anywhere but at home."

Veterans like Weeby and Coy have found a therapeutic way to generate positives from their Iraq War experiences — and better deal with some of the nagging uncertainties about Iraq’s future: They’ve reached out to their fellow vets.

Weeby is an outspoken advocate for San Francisco Bay Area veterans, while Coy is an associate at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, or IAVA, the first and largest non-profit group representing U.S. vets from those wars.

Both are currently in Washington, D.C., part of the "Storm the Hill" offensive, pressuring Congress to address key veterans’ issues, like 9.4 percent unemployment and a bottle-necked health-care program.

"Coming home with a renewed appreciation for my life and freedoms, I’ve committed my career to helping others," reflected Weeby.

U.S. military commanders would argue that the war in Iraq brought important changes there:  Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein and have at least gained a fledgling democracy and national elections.

But 10 years since “shock and awe” was supposed to clear the path for a liberated Iraq and a "forward strategy of freedom" that would sweep across the Middle East, Iraqis are instead falling victim to wave upon wave of sectarian violence.

And many of their American "liberators" are fighting for their own survival — back home.

Jim Maceda has covered Iraq since the 1980s.

Related:

Concern grows about military suicides spreading within families

The enemy within: Soldier suicides outpaced combat deaths in 2012

Full Iraq coverage from NBC News

Staff / Reuters

British soldiers wait to be transported to a base in the provincial capital Lashkar Gar in Camp Bastion, Helmand, Feb. 5, 2010.

British soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan - particularly young men and those who have seen active combat - are more likely to commit violent crimes than their civilian counterparts, according to research published on Friday.

The study of almost 14,000 British soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan is the first to examine the link between military service and violent crime by using official criminal records.

Researchers said the findings could help military officials improve their risk assessment of violence among serving and ex-military personnel.

They stressed that although the study points to a serious problem for those affected, it does not mean all ex-soldiers will become violent criminals.

"Overall you must remember that of those who serve in combat, 94 percent of those who come back will not offend."

The study found that those in combat roles were more than 50 percent more likely than those in non-combat roles to commit assaults or threaten violence after returning.

The problem was particularly striking among young men. Of around 3,000 soldiers aged under 30, more than 20 percent had a conviction for violent offences, compared with only 6.7 percent of civilian men in the same age group.

The study also highlights mental health problems in the military, and issues of alcohol abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and aggressive behaviour, the researchers said.

Violent offending was most common among young men from the lower ranks of the army, said Deirdre MacManus from King's College London, who led the work and presented the results at a briefing in London.

This behaviour was strongly associated with a history of violent offending before joining the military, she said.

The study's publication, in the Lancet medical journal on Friday, comes as military chiefs in the United States say a soldier charged with slaying 16 civilians in Afghanistan last year should undergo a sanity review.

Anecdotal evidence and media coverage of violence and assaults committed by ex-servicemen has focused attention on whether serving in combat makes soldiers less stable and more prone to violent outbursts.

The study's results found that men who had seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan were 53 percent more likely to commit violent offences than their fellow soldiers in non-combat roles.

Men who had multiple traumatic combat experiences had a 70 to 80 percent higher risk of becoming violent criminals.

David Forbes, an expert in post-traumatic mental health from the University of Melbourne, Australia, said this study showed for the first time the link between combat and interpersonal violence, and the need for better understanding of the mechanisms behind how combat enhances the risk of violence.

"By understanding these factors, we might develop more informed prevention and intervention programmes for troops as they reintegrate into civilian life," he wrote in a commentary.

Wessely said that having naturally higher levels of aggression was likely to be an attribute for many soldiers.

"Some people with aggressive dispositions make very good soldiers, that's the nature of the game," he said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — At least 40 Syrian pro-government soldiers and officials were killed in an ambush in the Iraq's Anbar province on Monday, according to an Iraqi government official. 

The Syrians had fled into Iraq after fighting anti-government forces in northern Syria, the source told NBC News, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Syrians, some of whom needed medical attention, handed themselves over to Iraqi authorities, he said.

The group deemed it was safer to return to Damascus by a circuitous route that entailed driving down to Baghdad and then back west to Syria, the official said. While the convoy was making its way through Anbar province — part of Iraq’s Sunni triangle and thus not allied with the Shiite-linked government of Syria's President Bashar Assad — it was ambushed by unknown Iraqi gunmen.

It is thought that at least 40 Syrian forces and officials and seven Iraqi soldiers escorting the foreigners were killed in the ambush.

Thousands of Iraqi Sunnis have been protesting for more than two months against Iraq's Shiite-led government and the perceived marginalization of their sect.

It is not known where the Syrians' bodies were.

Reuters contributed to this report.

President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to celebrated Army veteran Clinton Romesha on Monday afternoon, making the former active duty staff sergeant just the fourth living person to receive the military’s highest honor for service in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Romesha, 31, fought back tears as Obama presented him with the medal honoring his “conspicuous gallantry” during the Battle of Kamdesh, a day-long firefight at a remote Afghan outpost near the Pakistan border in 2009.

“These men were outnumbered, outgunned, and almost overrun,” Obama said in his remarks in the White House East Room. 

Romesha was recognized for leading the charge against hundreds of Taliban fighters during an Oct. 3, 2009, siege on U.S. troops at Combat Outpost Keating, a small compound military officials considered indefensible. 

Eight American soldiers were killed and 20 were wounded in the surprise attack, making it the deadliest day for the U.S. in the war effort that year.

Romesha headed up efforts to retake the camp, risking his own life as U.S. troops were besieged by rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, mortars and rifles.

Romesha, who served twice in Iraq, first took out a machine-gun team and then turned to a second, suffering shrapnel wounds when a grenade struck a generator he was using for cover.

An official citation read at the ceremony described Romesha’s subsequent acts of valor.

"Undeterred by his injuries, Staff Sergeant Romesha continued to fight and upon the arrival of another soldier to aid him and the assistant gunner, he again rushed through the exposed avenue to assemble additional soldiers," the citation says.

“With complete disregard for his own safety, (he) continually exposed himself to heavy enemy fire as he moved confidently about the battlefield engaging and destroying multiple enemy targets.”

Previously reported: "He's always been a good kid." 

All the while, Romesha devised a strategy to secure key points of the battlefield and directed air support to eliminate a band of thirty heavily armed enemy combatants.

Slideshow: Medal of Honor recipients

/

A look at heroes from a post-9/11 era of war

Launch slideshow

Romesha and his team also provided cover so three injured soldiers could make their way to an aid station. They then “pushed forward 100 meters under withering fire to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades,” according to the citation.

Romesha, a father of three and the son of a Vietnam veteran, reportedly never lost his composure during the chaotic attack, according to CNN journalist Jake Tapper, who chronicled the battle in the 2012 book "The Outpost."

'Clint is a pretty humble guy'
During his remarks, Obama recognized the lives of the eight soldiers who died at the Battle of Kamdesh, asking the parents of the fallen seated in the back of the room to stand for applause. 

But the heart of Obama's speech centered on a visibly emotional Romesha, who appeared to be fighting back tears as he looked ahead at his wife, Tammy, and three young children.

"Clint is a pretty humble guy," Obama said. "The thing he looks forward to the most is just being a husband and a father."

Romesha is slated to be a guest of first lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, CNN reported.

At a January news conference shortly after Obama called to inform him that he would receive the Medal of Honor, Romesha put the attention squarely on wounded friends and fallen comrades.

"I've had buddies that have lost eyesight and lost limbs," Romesha said. "I would rather give them all the credit they deserve for sacrificing so much. For me it was nothing, really. I got a little peppered, that was it."

Romesha, whom Tapper describes in his book as "an intense guy, short and wiry," lives in Minot, N.D., and works at KS Industries, an oil field construction firm.

A total of ten U.S. service members have been awarded the military's highest honor for actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, including six men who received the honor posthumously. 

The Medal of Honor is bestowed on members of the U.S. Armed Forces who display what the Army calls "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty."

Hussein Malla / AP file

U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer is shown at a ceremony transfering national sovereignty to Iraq in Baghdad on June 28, 2004.

Former U.S. diplomat Paul Bremer had shoes thrown at him during a meeting held Wednesday in the British Parliament in an attack reminiscent of the 2008 shoe hurling directed at President George W. Bush.

A video that captured the moment was posted on YouTube.

The incident occurred as Bremer, a former U.S. envoy to Iraq, was giving a speech at a meeting organized by the Henry Jackson Society, a British-based think tank named for the late U.S. senator from Washington state. Bush, who appointed Bremer to his post in Iraq was the target of a similar attack when he visited Baghdad in 2008. Shoe hurling is a traditional Arab gesture of disrespect.

In the latter incident, a man stood up, seemingly to address Bremer, and announced he was delivering two messages, one from Saddam Hussein and one from the Iraqi people.

"This is the first message," the man said, as he threw the first shoe. Bremer can be seen ducking, but he then started laughing, in seeming disbelief.

Seconds later, a second shoe flew across the room, and Bremer stood and tried to catch it -- but failed. "You should improve your aim if you want to do something like that," he said.

As the attacker was removed from the room, he could be heard shouting invectives addressed to Bremer, who he said is responsible for destroying his country.

"If he had done that while Saddam Hussein was alive, he would be a dead man by now," Bremer then said, addressing the crowd -- his composure regained.

From May 2003 to June 2004, Bremer served as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq, which was established following the 2003 invasion.