Twenty years ago, on March 19, 2003, a US led coalition invaded Iraq. Two claims were put forward by the Americans and their British allies to justify the unprecedented overthrow by force of the leadership of a sovereign state: that President Saddam Hussein possessed and was preparing to use weapons of mass destruction, and that his regime had been complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks on America by Al Qaeda in 2001. Both claims proved to be false. On Sept. 18, 2001, one week after the 9/11 attacks, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, visited US President George W. Bush in the White House. As Bruce Riedel, a member of Bush’s National Security Council, would later recall, when the president told the ambassador that he thought Iraq was behind the attacks, “Bandar was visibly perplexed.” The prince, Riedel said, “told Bush that the Saudis had no evidence of any collaboration between (Al Qaeda leader) Osama bin Laden and Iraq. Indeed, their history was of being antagonists.” But Bush “was obsessed with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and deliberately misled the American people about who was responsible for the 9/11 attack ... Consequently, the United States went to war in Iraq on a false pretense that it was somehow avenging those killed by Al Qaeda.” In an article published on the Lawfare blog on Sept. 11, 2021, Riedel wrote that after meeting Bush at the White House “Bandar told me privately that the Saudis were very worried about where Bush’s obsession with Iraq was going. The Saudis were alarmed that attacking Iraq would only benefit Iran and set in motion severe destabilizing repercussions across the region.” It was a prediction that would come to pass, with horrifying consequences that echo down to this day. This is the story of how the US and its allies falsified or deliberately misrepresented intelligence to justify an invasion that, in hindsight, proved unjustifiable. It is also the story of the human cost of that invasion, for which the people of Iraq are continuing to pay a heavy price. As a study of the war published in 2019 by the US Army would conclude, only one winner emerged from the years of civil war and insurgency that followed the US invasion and occupation: Iran.

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Twenty years ago, on March 19, 2003, a US led coalition invaded Iraq. Two claims were put forward by the Americans and their British allies to justify the unprecedented overthrow by force of the leadership of a sovereign state: that President Saddam Hussein possessed and was preparing to use weapons of mass destruction, and that his regime had been complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks on America by Al Qaeda in 2001. Both claims proved to be false. On Sept. 18, 2001, one week after the 9/11 attacks, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, visited US President George W. Bush in the White House. As Bruce Riedel, a member of Bush’s National Security Council, would later recall, when the president told the ambassador that he thought Iraq was behind the attacks, “Bandar was visibly perplexed.” The prince, Riedel said, “told Bush that the Saudis had no evidence of any collaboration between (Al Qaeda leader) Osama bin Laden and Iraq. Indeed, their history was of being antagonists.” But Bush “was obsessed with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and deliberately misled the American people about who was responsible for the 9/11 attack ... Consequently, the United States went to war in Iraq on a false pretense that it was somehow avenging those killed by Al Qaeda.” In an article published on the Lawfare blog on Sept. 11, 2021, Riedel wrote that after meeting Bush at the White House “Bandar told me privately that the Saudis were very worried about where Bush’s obsession with Iraq was going. The Saudis were alarmed that attacking Iraq would only benefit Iran and set in motion severe destabilizing repercussions across the region.” It was a prediction that would come to pass, with horrifying consequences that echo down to this day. This is the story of how the US and its allies falsified or deliberately misrepresented intelligence to justify an invasion that, in hindsight, proved unjustifiable. It is also the story of the human cost of that invasion, for which the people of Iraq are continuing to pay a heavy price. As a study of the war published in 2019 by the US Army would conclude, only one winner emerged from the years of civil war and insurgency that followed the US invasion and occupation: Iran.