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Concept
2003 invasion of Iraq
Summary
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States–led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. Twenty-two days after the first day of the invasion, the capital city of Baghdad was captured by Coalition forces on 9 April 2003 after the six-day-long Battle of Baghdad. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations" in his Mission Accomplished speech, after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.
The U.S.-led coalition sent 160,000 troops into Iraq during the initial invasion phase, which lasted from 19 March to 1 May 2003. About 73% or 130,000 soldiers were American, with about 45,000 British soldiers (25%), 2,000 Australian soldiers (1%), and 194 Polish soldiers (0.1%). Thirty-six other countries were involved in its aftermath. In preparation for the invasion, 100,000 U.S. troops assembled in Kuwait by 18 February. The coalition forces also received support from the Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan.
According to U.S. President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the coalition aimed "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction [WMD], to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people", even though the UN inspection team led by Hans Blix had declared it had found absolutely no evidence of the existence of WMDs just before the start of the invasion. Others place a much greater emphasis on the impact of the September 11 attacks, on the role this played in changing U.S.
Official source
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