a Western-style democracy in Iraq produced an elected government, but four years
after the invasion, Baghdad and many other parts of Iraq continued to be wracked by
widespread violence—much of it sectarian in nature—that made the ultimate success
of Washington’s endeavors in Iraq appear problematic at best.
Rationales for the War
In speeches and other presentations leading up to the war, President George W. Bush
and his aides offered a two-part justification for the decision to invade Iraq: Hussein’s
government had built, and continued to develop, weapons of mass destruction, which
could be passed on to terrorists, some of whom were determined to attack the United
States and its allies. Bush cited this rationale in his most important speech explaining
the war, on March 17, 2003, two days before the war began. “Intelligence gathered
by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to pos-
sess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,” Bush said, adding that
the Hussein regime had a history of “reckless aggression” in the Middle East. “The
danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with
the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands
or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other.”
Bush offered no evidence—then or later—to support his claim that Iraq would
give weapons to terrorist groups, such as the al-Qaida network that had sponsored the
September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. Numerous subsequent investi-
gations and accounts of decision making by administration officials indicate that no
such evidence ever existed, although this argument formed the central basis for Bush’s
justification of the war to the American people and the world at large.
At various points Bush offered other explanations for his decision to go to war,
all centering around the goal of replacing a dangerous dictatorship in Iraq with a dem-
ocratically elected government that would live in peace with its neighbors. The presi-
dent referred briefly to this rationale in his March 17 speech, telling Iraqis that “we
will tear down the apparatus of terror, and we will help you to build a new Iraq that
is prosperous and free.” Bush also suggested, with increasing passion after Hussein had
been ousted, that a newly democratic Iraq would serve as a model for the rest of the
Middle East, thus reducing tensions regionwide and even making possible a final set-
tlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A Three-Week War
There never was much question that the United States, with the most powerful and
technologically advanced military in the world, could overwhelm Iraq’s army, which
had not been fully rebuilt after more than a decade of war followed by a decade of
international sanctions. Pentagon war planners did worry, however, about the pros-
pect of Iraq using biological or chemical weapons against the invading armies, and for
this reason U.S soldiers and marines went into battle wearing hot and bulky protec-
tive clothing in the Iraqi desert. This precaution proved to be unnecessary. The Iraqi
military did not use weapons of mass destruction simply because it no longer had any.
On Bush’s orders, the assault against Iraq began early in the morning of March
20 (local time), with a bombing attack against a house in Baghdad where Hussein was
IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS 505