George W. Bush said: “Helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.” | AP Photo Bush announces launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, March 19, 2003

On this day in 2003, President George W. Bush announced the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The U.S.-led invasion was, according to Bush, aimed at ridding Iraq of its dictator, Saddam Hussein, and eliminating its ability to store, develop and deploy its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

In a nationwide televised address, Bush said: “Helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.” He acknowledged the substantial domestic opposition to the war and said that he had only “reluctantly” authorized the invasion. At the same time, the president noted his administration’s refusal to “live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.”


Within six weeks, the pre-emptive strike morphed into an occupation. Saddam's eventual capture by U.S. troops led to his trial in an Iraqi court, which sentenced him to death by hanging.

A post-invasion investigation by the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in 1991 but that it intended to resume production if sanctions were lifted. Some investigators concluded Saddam, when it came to the offending weapons, was engaged in a big bluff.

Although Bush announced on May 1, 2003, that the U.S. mission had been “accomplished,” violence against coalition forces and among sectarian groups soon escalated into a full-fledged insurgency. Strife between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis continued, and the violent group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which used suicide bombers, emerged.

During the war’s most intense phase, which lasted more than four years, U.S. casualties climbed to more than 3,000, with more than 23,000 wounded. Iraqi civilian fatalities were estimated at more than 50,000.

In February 2009, President Barack Obama announced an 18-month withdrawal window for combat forces, with some 50,000 troops remaining “to advise and train Iraqi security forces and to provide intelligence.”

After the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by December 2011, a violent insurgency of mainly Sunni Islamic Islamist fighters targeting the Iraqi government gained force. By June 2014, Sunni Islamic, jihadist and ISIS militants, already having achieved territorial successes in the Syrian civil war, had conquered the Iraqi cities of Samarra, Mosul and Tikrit, and threatened the Mosul Dam and Kirkuk, where Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga troops took control from the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

An Iraqi counterinsurgency effort, supported by U.S. airstrikes and an ever-increasing number of combat advisers, remains underway. President Donald Trump has pledged that ISIS will be eradicated under his watch.

SOURCE: “FIASCO: THE AMERICAN MILITARY ADVENTURE IN IRAQ,” BY THOMAS E. RICKS (2006)

