It has been 20 years since the invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition, an event that unleashed a violent instability still evident today, but not only within the country but throughout the Middle East.
The controversial military operation began he March 20, 2003 and succeeded in quickly subduing Saddam Hussein’s regime, but this was followed by a long fight against the insurgency and a political polarization that continues to this day.
hussein eluded capture for nearly nine months before being apprehended in December 2003 and executed by the new Iraqi government three years later.
What happened to the protagonists of a war that still arouses heated debates today? Let’s take a look.
Hussein ruled Iraq with an iron fist from 1979 to 2003. This despite his resounding defeat at the hands of US-led coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf War, which fell short of overthrowing him but forced him to to withdraw its forces from neighboring Kuwait, which it had occupied in August of the previous year.
But with the March 2003 invasion, his forces collapsed within three weeks.hussein went into hiding until he was captured on December 13 of that year by the Americans.
He was executed by hanging in Baghdad in 2006. Iraqi state television showed footage of Hussein hanging before dawn in a building his intelligence services once used for executions.
In a last act of defiance, refused to wear a hood tothe scaffold.
In 2003, George W. Bush became the second US president to launch a war against Iraq, following in the footsteps of his own father, George Bush, who held the White House from 1989 to 1993.
In the weeks that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush achieved approval ratings highest ever recorded by a US president (91%, according to the Gallup poll).
However, his handling of the Iraq war – especially the death of more than 4,400 US soldiers, according to US Department of Defense figures – caused Bush to end his term in 2009 as the House occupant. White less popular since polls exist.
Since leaving office, Bush, 75, has kept a low profile but, in his few media appearances, has also stood firm in his decision to invade Iraq.
“There has been an ongoing effort by some figures in the Bush administration to say that, despite the hoaxes (the alleged weapons of mass destruction were never found), the iraq war it was himor correct“, declared to the BBC the American journalist Thomas E. Ricks, author of the book “Fiasco: the military adventure in Iraq”.
The former president often argued that Hussein’s removal was part of this logic. But Ricks, who covered the invasion of Iraq, isn’t convinced.
“These kinds of justifications do not speak to the enormous costs of the war, both for the Iraqis and for the Americans. They also do not address how the us invasion changed the middle east“, explained the communicator.
Bush has limited himself to appearing publicly on state occasions such as presidential inaugurations and funerals.
Now he spends most of his time at his ranch in the state of Texas, where he pursues his hobbies, among which are painting. in 2021 published a book of portraits of his authorship.
The former vice president of George W. Bush was a strong advocate of military action against Iraq and made numerous public statements accusing Saddam Hussein’s regime of possessing weapons of mass destruction, the claim on which Washington built its case. to justify the invasion.
As Iraq was rocked by sectarian strife in 2006, Cheney himself got involved a fact of bloodwhen he accidentally shot a fellow hunter, wounding him in the face, neck and chest.
The incident gave him a minor heart attack, but his friend, Harry Whittington, 78, survived. “It’s not Harry’s fault,” Cheney told Fox television. “Ultimately, I was the one who pulled the trigger.”
At 82, Cheney has taken a radically different stance from Bush since leaving office. Thus he has established a position on different political issues and even ha participated in electoral rallies.
Likewise, he openly criticized the then president, Donald Trump, for the assault on Congress that in January 2021 carried out by his followers.
Cheney was famously portrayed by a “transformed” Christian Bale in the 2018 satirical film “Vice,” which was the second production to portray the Bush administration after the biopic Oliver Stone’s presidential “W”, released in 2008.
He was Bush’s defense secretary from 2001 to 2006 and played a critical – and controversial – role in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Among other things, Rumsfeld was accused of providing “alternative intelligence assessments” to support the invasion and the ousting of Hussein, while ignored the complaints of torture prisoners of war by US forces.
Rumsfeld left office in 2006 amid growing US public and political opposition to his management of post-war Iraq.
The former official did not shy away from the spotlight, however, publishing an autobiography, participating in a documentary about his career and joining other former defense secretaries in warning then-President Donald Trump not to try to ignore the results of the 2020 presidential election.
rumsfeld he died of cancer in June 2021.
She was National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State during the eight years of Bush’s tenure, becoming the first black woman to hold these positions in US government history.
In addition to being a supporter of the Iraq war, she was constantly featured in the US media to warn of the threat posed by Hussein’s regime. She even went so far as to affirm to the CNN news network that Iraqi leader could quickly acquire nuclear weapons.
Source: La Opinion
