It’s gone largely unnoticed amid growing financial despair, job losses, rampant foreclosures and partisan warring, but the clock is ticking on our military presence in Iraq.

The pact recently approved between the Iraq government and the White House mandates U.S. troops cede control of cities and towns to Iraqi security forces this summer, then other areas by New Year’s Day 2012.

That should be cause for celebration, even if it’s not soon enough for some. But you hear little about it. With all else unfolding, the Iraq war suddenly seems a million miles away.

One wonders what troops there throughout 2008 will make of home upon their return.

The Army apparently wonders, too — and worries.

Forty or so miles from Waco, the mission continues with 1st Cavalry Division troops at Fort Hood beginning another return to Iraq. Meanwhile, 4th Infantry Division headquarters and the 1st Brigade Combat Team and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment are wrapping up yet another 15-month tour of duty in Iraq.

From the daily dispatches I get from Iraq through Fort Hood —- sometimes a dozen a day — troops there are betting the 1st Cavalry will find a far more settled country than on their last tour of duty.

Counting on your buddies

Despite the incident of an Iraqi journalist hurling his shoes defiantly at President Bush this month, Army officials say the Iraqi people — while eager to regain control of their country — are hardly sympathetic to al-Qaida and others who helped turn Iraq into a second front in the war on terror.

“This time last year, al-Qaida was blowing up power lines, sewer lines, water lines,” said Lt. Col. Arnold Csan, chief of civil affairs, describing the change in Iraqi attitudes. “That is not attacking Americans, that is attacking the people of Iraq to disrupt their normal lives.”

Last January, Iraqi women even began enlisting in a group, Daughters of Iraq, working as bomb searchers at security checkpoints.

Most post dispatches convey everyday life of U.S. troops in Iraq. One 4th Infantry dispatch concerns the rapport between Sgt. James Harrington, a military policeman, and his Texas wonder dog, Ryky, a Belgian Malinois capable of detecting 19 different combustible odors.

Another concerns a 26.2-mile marathon run by 168 soldiers at Camp Taji while spouses, in a spirited if strenuous show of support, ran the very same marathon in Honolulu.

Meanwhile, the Army is bracing for possibly more traumatic times: The return home.

In once-deadly Sadr City, Command Sgt. Maj. Dennis Carey, senior enlisted man in the Army Forces Command, praised what soldiers from Fort Hood and elsewhere did in cities where violence once reigned incessantly.

“You guys have a phenomenal record,” he told fellow enlisted leaders before their second Christmas on just this deployment alone. “Even the president thumps his chest on what you guys did in Sadr City.”

Then Carey warned that soldiers returning from Iraq — after living in close quarters for more than a year and counting on one another so intently 24 hours a day, seven days a week — may find life back home jarring. He cited possibilities of everything from traffic accidents and divorce to financial issues “and just about any other issue that our society faces.”

Which, these days in America, is plenty.

“I know doing 15 months is hard, but, heck, after eight or nine months back in the states, you might be saying, ‘Man, I wish I were back there,’ ” he said.

“In some respects, you have it easier here,” he said. “It may not seem like that, but it’s true. OK, take out the rockets and the IEDs or the small-arms attacks and all that, and you’ve got it pretty easy here because you’ve got these guys under your wing.”

Considering their noble sacrifices, we on the home front may very well have failed our troops. We offer nearly 2 million jobs lost in 2008, a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion, corruption and incompetence at the highest levels of government and, finally, precious little sacrifice made by citizens in wartime.

Of course, as Carey noted, there are other horizons. Afghanistan, for instance.

“All bets are off,” he told senior enlisted men. “It’s persistent conflict, and the enemy gets a vote. This is going to keep going and you all need to understand that.”

Sounds like Washington, D.C.

Bill Whitaker’s column runs Fridays. E-mail: bwhitaker@wacotrib.com.