optimism for a quick and relatively bloodless outcome in Iraq was apparent even before the invasion. They're chaotic - and costlier than anyone anticipates Meanwhile, Marsin Alshamary, an 11-year-old Iraqi American growing up in Minneapolis, Minn., when the invasion occurred, says "seeing planes and bombing over where my grandparents lived made me cry." Alshamary, who is now a Middle East policy expert at the Brookings Institution, says to her at the time, the possibility that Saddam would be deposed seemed "unreal."Ĭrocker, Mansoor and Alshamary recently shared their thoughts with NPR on lessons learned from one of America's longest conflicts - the war in Iraq. "I didn't expect the Iraqi army to be able to put up much resistance beyond a few weeks." "I was very interested in the outcome of the invasion and what would happen in the aftermath," says Mansoor, who is now a military history professor at Ohio State University. Army War College at the time, was concerned about his future, knowing that he'd soon be in command of the first brigade of the 1st Armored Division, which would go on to see action in Iraq. Peter Mansoor, a colonel attending the U.S. Crocker wondered, "God knows where we're going." But it was a sense of dread, not excitement. ![]() "I was thinking, 'Here we go,' " he recalls. ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait and Syria and would go on to hold the top diplomatic post in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, first saw Bush's televised speech announcing the start of combat operations, he was at an airport heading back to Washington, D.C. When Ryan Crocker, who at the time had already been U.S. Although estimates vary, a Brown University estimate puts the cost of the combat phase of the war at around $2 trillion. ![]() While the invasion succeeded in toppling Saddam, it ultimately failed to uncover any secret stash of weapons of mass destruction. service members, and at least 270,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, were killed. In eight years of boots on the ground, the U.S. However, Bush's caveat that the campaign "could be longer and more difficult than some predict" proved prescient. Powell was making a presentation attempting to convince the world that Iraq was deliberately hiding weapons of mass destruction.īush described the massive airstrikes on Iraq as the "opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign" and pledged that "we will accept no outcome but victory." Senate in 2002 during his address to the U.N. Secretary of State Colin Powell holds a vial representing the small amount of anthrax that closed the U.S.
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