From what I can discern from the TC's post, he is confusing the Iraq War with the Afghanistan War, which is not unsurprising, considering the media misinformation regarding the two invasions to this day.
First, the September 11, 2001 attacks prompted the Bush administration to demand that the Taliban, who was suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, to hand him over. The Taliban refused, and we invaded Afghanistan within a few months. This was in 2002.
The Iraq War began in 2003. The initial reason for the war was that Saddam Hussain was harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction in his country, according to an unnamed intelligence report that the administration never bothered to show to the public or congress. Presenting a summarized version of this report to the Republican-majority congress while playing on the fears the country still faced after 9/11, not to mention the presence of corporate interests in another large-scale war, Bush easily won congressional approval to invade Iraq. The backing of the public was not at all surprising considering the expert role the media played in being pressured by the administration into using the president's "intelligence sources" as proof that Iraq posed a genuine threat to the United States.
The invasion of Iraq and the push of U.S. forces into Baghdad was unprecedented and devastating to the city (part of the infamous "Shock and Awe" campaign, echoing the German Blitzkrieg used in World War II). Fighter planes dropped bombs on the city for nights, while the military stormed the capital and Saddam's Republican Palace. Thousands were dead following the initial invasion (an estimated 450,000 Iraqis are presumed dead since the 2003 invasion - these are official U.S. estimates). After a few months, fighting seemed to have died down, Saddam was in hiding, and his government in tatters. The Republican Palace was transformed into a sort of extravagant hotel for U.S. higher-ups and reporters. Now that Saddam was out of power, the search for weapons of mass destruction would be underway.
They were never found. To this day, neither the U.S. military nor U.N. weapon inspectors have found any nuclear or biochemical weapons that would pose a threat to the United States or its allies. The Iraqi weapons program was, in fact, officially disbanded in 1991 after the Gulf War. Another part of the Bush Administration's rationale for the Iraq War was that Saddam held a link to al Qaeda operatives - this was unfounded. No significant link was ever discovered between Hussein and al Qaeda.
The Administration realized that its "intelligence" regarding WMDs was facing scrutiny and questioning. They immediately abandoned it as the rationale for the war and contended that they had invaded "to free the Iraqi people". The war was codenamed "Operation Iraqi Freedom". The irony in this was astounding - hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians had been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion, the country's government and infrastructure lay in shambles, the collapse of Hussein's Ba'athist regime prompted an insurgency of Shia militant groups, and to this day true stability in Iraq has yet to be achieved. The truth is that Iraq before the war was a legitimately better place for the Iraqi people, despite being ruled by Saddam Hussein; women were given equal opportunity, the quality of education was remarkably high, the impact of American culture could be visibly felt, and the standard of living of the average Iraqi was higher than it currently is now.
The fact about the Iraq War is that it did not benefit the American people or the Iraqi people. Those who truly benefitted were George W. Bush and his administration, who profitted from the war, as did the weapons industry. The invasion of Iraq and the destruction of a once relatively peaceful and prosperous city has made our country less secure and added to the rhetoric of terrorist groups across the world. What it all boils down to is this: Bush lied to the American people and Congress regarding the reasons for invading Iraq. U.N. reports confirm that Iraq disbanded its weapons program in 1991, while Bush proclaimed that he had intelligence reports that stated the opposite. The fact that he never released these reports to the public or substantiated the source, and that we never found WMDs in Iraq since we invaded in 2003, is more than enough proof to prove that he lied and is thus liable for criminal prosecution.
We should hang our heads in shame for what our government did to Iraq and its terrible expenditure of American lives. More than 3,000 American soldiers died in the Iraq War since 2003 - this number is greater than the amount of Americans killed in the 9/11 attacks. The lies and the realities surrounding the war are a derision and mockery of the values that the United States government should stand for.
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