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The 2003 invasion of Iraq overthrew President Saddam Hussein
Mar 20, 2023, 07:43 03
Updated 1 hour ago
On March 20, 2003, the US and allied forces invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The US said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and is a threat to international peace. But most countries refused to support military action against Iraq.
Why did the US want to invade Iraq?
In the 19901991 Gulf War, the US led a multinational coalition that expelled Iraqi troops from Kuwait who had invaded the country.
Subsequently, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 687, which directed Iraq to destroy all of its weapons of mass destruction a term used to describe nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and longrange ballistic missiles.
In 1998 Iraq stopped working with the UN weapons inspectors. The US and Britain responded with airstrikes.
After the alQaeda attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001, the administration of President George W. Bush began making plans for an invasion of Iraq.
President Bush claimed that Saddam continued to manufacture and stockpile weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was part of an international “axis of evil” along with Iran and North Korea.
In October 2002, the US Congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq.
“Many people in Washington believed that there was significant evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that it posed a real threat,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the US and Americas program at Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank in Iraq London .
In February 2003, thenUS Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the UN Security Council to authorize military action against Iraq, alleging that the country’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program was in violation of previous resolutions.
However, he failed to convince the council. Most of its members wanted UN and International Energy Agency weapons inspectors who visited Iraq in 2002 to do more work to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
The US said it would not wait for inspectors to come up with reports and formed a “coalition of willing countries” against Iraq.
Who supported the war?
Of the 30 coalition countries, Great Britain, Australia and Poland contributed soldiers to the invasion.
Britain sent 45,000 troops; Australia, 2 thousand; and Poland, 194. Kuwait allowed the invasion from its territory.
Spain and Italy provided diplomatic support for the USled coalition, as did several eastern European nations in the “Vilnius Group,” who said they believe Iraq has a weapons of mass destruction program and is violating UN resolutions.
What did the US and Britain accuse Iraq of?
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN in 2003 that Iraq had “mobile laboratories” for producing biological weapons.
However, he conceded in 2004 that the evidence for this “does not appear to be that solid (…)”.
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US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN that Iraq is producing weapons of mass destruction
The British government released an intelligence dossier saying Iraqi missiles could be prepared in 45 minutes to hit British targets in the eastern Mediterranean.
ThenBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair said there was “no question” that Saddam Hussein continued to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
The two countries based their reports on claims by two Iraqi defectors a chemical engineer named Rafid Ahmed Alwan alJanabi and an intelligence officer named Maj Muhammad Harith who said they had firsthand knowledge of Iraq’s program of mass destruction.
Both said years later that they fabricated the evidence because they wanted the Allies to attack and oust Saddam.
Who didn’t support the invasion?
The US’s two neighbors Canada and Mexico did not support the invasion. Germany and France, two key US allies in Europe, also withdrew their support for the war.
Turkey also a member of the NATO military alliance and a neighbor of Iraq has denied the US and its allies permission to use its air bases.
Middle Eastern countries that supported the US in the 199091 Gulf War against Iraq, such as Saudi Arabia, did not support the 2003 invasion.
“The Persian Gulf countries thought the plan was crazy,” says Professor Gilbert Achcar, an expert on Middle East politics at the University of London SOAS.
What happened in the war?
In the early hours of March 20, 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom began when 295,000 American and allied troops invaded Iraq across the Kuwait border.
In northern Iraq, 70,000 members of the Kurdish Peshmerga militia fought against Iraqi forces.
In May the Iraqi army was defeated and its regime overthrown. Saddam Hussein was later captured, tried and executed.
However, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
In 2004 the country was torn apart by a sectarian uprising. Years later, civil war broke out between the Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq.
In 2011, US troops withdrew from Iraq.
An estimated 461,000 people died in Iraq from warrelated causes between 2003 and 2011, and the war cost the US$3 trillion.
“The USA lost a lot of credibility with this war,” says Karin von Hippel, director general of the think tank of the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Twenty years later you still hear people saying: Why should we believe American intelligence?”