INTO HELL

Iraq War 20 years on: By Mirrorman who was there | Invasion toppled tyrant but terror rushed to fill the power vacuum

- CHRIS HUGHES

IT opened with a “shock and awe” blitz on Saddam Hussein’s palaces and then, 20 years ago today, troops stormed Iraq in a campaign whose effects continue. 

A 200,000-strong US-led deployment was sent in following claims tyrant Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Months of protests had opposed the war but a dodgy intelligence dossier persuaded Tony Blair’s UK government to back George W Bush’s invasion.

Iraqis in Baghdad told me before the invasion that they did not believe America would dare attack.

Some of them were veterans of the Republican Guard – the feared, supposedly elite corps of Saddam’s army. In reality they were poverty-stricken and had suffered for years under Saddam.

But neoconservat iv e s in America’s government of the time had longstanding ambitions to replace Saddam’s regime. So after 9/11 they used the atrocity, along with warped and false intelligence, to justify the invasion of Iraq – though al-Qaeda’s attack had been devised in Afghanistan.

The resulting war cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

And it was a shocking lesson in how to plant the seeds of insurgency and then hand it the space to grow.

By May 1, George W Bush declared combat operations were over. Ex-US diplomat Paul Bremer added to Iraq’s humiliation by heading the Coalition Provisional Authority, arrogantly removing the country’s security network. Iraq’s Sunni-led security apparatus was dismantled, with police, spies, soldiers, local officials and politicians removed from their posts.