September fifth 2002 Louisville, Kentucky, US President George W. Bush said, “I take the fact that he develops weapons of mass destruction very seriously”.
President George W. Bush speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast on May 1, 2003. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
On March the 20th 2003 American-led collation launched its on-ground invasion and declared war against Iraq on the claim of possession of weapons of mass destruction. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
An illegal war that preached the United Nations charter and was based on misinformation and ultimately changed the world as we know it. The war that created unrest in the Middle East, and opened the door for AL Qaeda in several countries in the Arab world.
America tried to sell the war but failed:
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a speech on February fifth 2002 in the United Nations headquarters in New York when he claimed that the American administration have received intelligence from their agents in Iraq of the existence of chemical weapons in Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
“We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories”, Powell told the security. he also the council that an Iraqi engineer came forward and told US intelligence that he was present during biological agent production runs, and another other source confirmed the existence of laboratories and mobile biological systems on cars and rails in the summer of 2002.
Millions of people took to the streets across the globe in over 600 cities worldwide on the 15th of Feb 2002 to protest the invasion of Iraq and what become to be known as the largest protest in history. Approximately 200,000 In New York gathered and marched to the United Nations building. In Europe, the numbers were even bigger as three million were said to have demonstrated in Rome and 750 thousand demonstrated in London.
The United Nations didn’t authorise the war on Iraq unlike the first Golf war or the Afghanistan war that was waged by the USA and was approved by the UN. Members of the security council including Germany and France opposed and demanded further inspections before waging a war. Nevertheless, the USA, UK, Australia, and Poland joined forces to oust Saddam Hussein from power.
Smoke rises from the Trade Ministry in Baghdad on March 20, 2003, after it was hit by a missile during US-led attacks. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
The UK diplomat that Prime Minster Tony Blair should have listened to:
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons Robin Cook spoke on 17 March 2003 at the House of Commons in London and gave his resignation speech that now can be viewed as the best prediction of the outcome of the war and said, “none of us can predict the death toll of civilians of the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq”.
He predicted then that the death tool will be in the thousands and right he was. According to a study published in 2013, the death toll related to the war in Iraq is estimated for more than 450 thousand deaths of Iraqi civilians from 2003 onwards and the insurgency that followed the American invasion.The study cared out by researchers from the United States, Iraq and Canada took a broader look at the likely death toll from the war based on their estimate on n mid-2011 we conducted a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of all adults living in 2,000 randomly selected households in 100 clusters across Iraq.
Sir John Chilcot, in his 2016 Iraq inquiry, concluded that not only had former Prime Minister Blair joined the war based on false information but the intelligence community did little to hold Downing St back. The inquiry also stated that military action was a premature move before peaceful options for disarmament were exhausted. The Chilcot inquiry also stated the attack on Iraq was made on the base of flawed intelligence and assessments that were not challenged and they should’ve been.
Research from the project Costs of War at Watson Institute for international and public affairs at Brown University state the death toll from the 2003 war is between275,000 and 306,000 civilians have died from direct war-related violence caused by the U.S., its allies but the actual numbers are unknown and most likely higher.
Twenty years later, Iraq has not recovered from the destruction caused by the invasion of the infrastructure. Iraqi people are still reaping the aftermath of an illegal war waged on false pretences that left millions displaced and paved the way for the existence of terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria. Iraq suffers from a lack the basic services including electricity and health services despite having the fifth largest oil reserve globally and having been controlled by Iran-loyal political personnel since 2005 who take turns on the power as businessmen do on a courtesan.
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