Just because the U.S. has said it is leaving Iraq, doesn’t actually mean that it is leaving. When you are a giant country you can say things that lead people to think one thing and do things that are the total opposite.

Here is one example:

Claim:

Bailing out the auto industry is good for the American taxpayer with programs like cash for clunkers.

Reality:

Taxpayers face losses on a significant portion of the $81 billion in government aid provided to the auto industry, an oversight panel said in a report to be released Wednesday.

The Congressional Oversight Panel did not provide an estimate of the projected loss in its latest monthly report on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. But it said most of the $23 billion initially provided to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC late last year is unlikely to be repaid.

And in terms of Iraq, here is the claim:

American troops have moved out of Iraq’s cities and bases

and the reality:

With American troops moved out of Iraq’s cities and more than 100 bases across the country continuing to close or to be turned over to Iraq, the 130,000 American troops here will increasingly fall back to these larger bases.

While some are technically called camps or bases, they are commonly referred to as forward operating bases, or F.O.B.’s. The F.O.B. is so ingrained in the language of this war that soldiers who stayed mainly on base were once derisively called Fobbits by those outside the wire. But increasingly, the encampments are the way many Americans experience the war.

To be sure, thousands of Americans are with Iraqis at small bases, where they play an advisory role, and thousands more are on the roads and highways providing the protection needed to carry out the withdrawal.

But the F.O.B. has become an iconic part of the war, both for those fighting it and for the Iraqis, who have been largely kept out of them during the war.

They are in some ways a world apart from Iraq, with working lights, proper sanitation, clean streets and strictly observed rules and codes of conduct. Some bases have populations of more than 20,000, with thousands of contractors and third-country citizens to keep them running.

But the bases are also part of the Iraqi landscape. Mortar shells still occasionally fall inside the wire, and soldiers fall asleep to the constant sounds of helicopters, controlled detonations and gunfire from firing ranges.