As news of the pullout reached Baghdad, the streets of the Iraqi capital and other major cities were little changed, with heavy commuter traffic snaking through police and military checkpoints.
"I am proud — all Iraqis should be proud, like all those whose country has been freed," 26-year-old baker Safa, who did not want to give his real name, said in Baghdad's Karrada commercial district. "The Americans toppled Saddam, but our lives since then have gone backward.
"The situation will only improve if politicians work on fighting corruption and adopt reforms," he added.
Sunday's completion of the withdrawal brings to a close nearly nine years of American military involvement in Iraq, beginning with a "shock and awe" campaign in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein, which many in Washington believed would see US forces conclude their mission in Iraq within months.
But key decisions taken at the time have since been widely criticized as fueling what became a bloody insurgency, eventually sparking devastating communal violence.
"I don't think we can ever forgive the Americans for what they did to us, from killings to terrorism," said a 50-year-old mother-of-four who gave her name only as Umm Mohammed. "Those people (Americans) think only about themselves, and not about the consequences of their actions."
More than 100,000 Iraqis have been reported killed in violence since the invasion, according to British NGO Iraq Body Count, and countless others have been wounded.
In the mostly Sunni Arab north Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah, where Saddam Hussein was last seen publicly before his capture, 60-year-old retiree Mohammed Abdelamir said he felt "freed from the occupation," referring to US troops as many Iraqis long have, as an occupying force.
"We must all cooperate and work to improve the economy, the society, and begin rebuilding, and not fight because we are seeing that some politicians have already begun putting a stick in the wheel."
Key political issues such as reform of the mostly state-run economy and a law to regulate and organize the lucrative energy sector also remain unresolved, to say nothing of an explosive territorial dispute between Arabs and Kurds centered around the northern oil hub of Kirkuk.
"Today is a historic day, and our happiness is great," said Abdul Hussein Hosh, a 59-year-old government employee in the sprawling Baghdad Shiite district of Sadr City.
The last US soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border into neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. Their convoy's exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war that raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered, with troubling questions lingering over whether the Arab nation will remain a steadfast US ally.
The mission cost nearly 4,500 American and over 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 billion from the US Treasury. The question of whether it was worth it all is yet unanswered.
After a ceremony Thursday in Baghdad formally marking the end of the war, the timing and all other details of the departure of the last convoy were kept under tight secrecy out of security concerns for about 500 troops and more than 110 vehicles that were part of it. The low-key end to the war was just another reminder of how dangerous Iraq remains, even though violence is lower now than at any other time since the 2003 invasion.
The last convoy of MRAPs, heavily armored personnel carriers, made a largely uneventful journey out except for a few equipment malfunctions along the way. It was dark and little was visible through the MRAP windows as they cruised through the southern Iraqi desert. The 336-km trip from a base in southern Iraq took about five hours.
