Iraq Veterans: 20 Years On

• The 20th anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq has brought up “mixed” feelings for many of those involved in the war.
• The conflict “changed me in many ways, personally and professionally,” one former soldier told Newsweek.
• Policymakers have “lessons” to learn from the war, another said.

It was the moment 20 years ago when President George W. Bush told the world the United States was going to war with Saddam Hussein.

“These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign,” the 43rd president said on March 19, 2003, as U.S troops deployed to Iraq.

“At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger,” Bush told the American people at the beginning of what would turn into years of controversial conflict.

The justification for the U.S. and U.K. governments was the removal of Saddam Hussein, and his purported weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But the conflict ended in 2011 with the deaths of more than 4,400 U.S troops – and serious question marks over the reasons why the coalition forces went to war.

“To all the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you,” the Republican president said in his historic speech.

But twenty years after those words were uttered, the very men and women who shouldered this burden described by Bush have mixed feelings about being responsible for “the peace of a troubled world.”

First Memories

It was a time of “great apprehension,” in the words of retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mike Linnington. In 2003, he led the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles,” and was part of the invading force of Operation Iraqi Freedom in mid-March.

But “once we crossed the berm and began combat operations, that dissipated,” he told Newsweek as the twentieth anniversary of the start of the war approached.