Damascus-SANA
Claiming to possess weapons of mass destruction, the United States of America and its allies invaded and destroyed Iraq on this day in 2003, killing 1.2 million Iraqis, injuring hundreds of thousands, and displacing five million, in addition to major losses in infrastructure and vital facilities, according to international statistics.
Washington and its allies, led by Britain, before their aggression against the Iraqi people, deliberately promoted and followed a media propaganda about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, ignoring the reports of the international inspection teams, the most prominent of which was Inspector Hans Blix's team, which proved the falseness of their claims that they do not exist at all.
The decision to invade Iraq, which was taken during a meeting held at the time by US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the US air base in the Portuguese Azores islands on the 16th of the same month, was met with widespread international rejection, as many countries of the world witnessed demonstrations condemning this brutal aggression that was proven in the future. The aim of it is to plunder the wealth and capabilities of the Iraqis.
In clear evidence of the falseness of Washington's allegations of the invasion of Iraq by the so-called "international coalition", Jeff Hoon, the former defense minister in Blair's government, revealed that the latter had ordered the burning of a "secret memorandum" proving that the US-British invasion of Iraq was illegal and that Blair deliberately lied about the threat it posed. Iraq to justify Britain's inaction and its involvement with the United States in that invasion.
The plan for the American and Western invasion of Iraq was premeditated and prepared in advance. Perhaps Bush Jr.’s response to former US President Bill Clinton’s admission in 2004 of the mistake of invading Iraq said: “Even if I knew before the war what I know now that there were no banned weapons in Iraq, I would have entered Iraq.” With Blair admitted that he participated in the invasion of Iraq, despite the lack of evidence of possession of weapons of mass destruction.
The actions of the United States in Iraq after its invasion led to the aggravation of the situation in the entire region and the emergence of the terrorist organization “ISIS”, which was confirmed by the head of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the invasion.
Zhirinovsky said, "The Americans had hoped to break up Iraq and all the countries of the Middle East, so that there would be dozens of small countries so that Israel would dominate everyone, but their partition plans did not succeed in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan."
For his part, researcher Dr. Amir Al-Saadi considered that the United States turned Iraq into an arena for settling accounts, and said, “America initially gave way to al-Qaeda terrorist organization and later came to ISIS, which destroyed everything, even archaeological sites and Iraqi heritage,” pointing out that the roots of this terrorism It is not finished yet and is still scattered in more than one place.
The invasion of Iraq constituted another dark page in the history of the United States and its Western allies, which is full of waging wars, fabricating crises, imposing sanctions, supporting and manufacturing terrorism, and directing it against countries that do not follow its orbit, as it did in Syria and elsewhere in the service of the Zionist entity and its plans.
Fahmy El Shaarawy
Follow Sana's news on Telegram https://t.me/SyrianArabNewsAgency