Twenty years ago, in the early hours, the first bombs fell on Baghdad – the start of an invasion that would lead to years of war for British and American troops, countless civilian and military losses, and a political vacuum into which terrorists took hold and inflicted further unspeakable cruelties on the people of Iraq.
With two decades’ hindsight, the wrongs of this catastrophic strategic blunder are clear to all but a few. After all, there were no weapons of mass destruction. But it is easy to forget that, in the heat of the debate in 2002 and 2003, the majority of the press and politicians were swayed by the Bush administration and, in Britain, the Blair government’s torrent of propaganda, most notoriously the “sexed-up” dossier claiming Saddam Hussein could launch WMDs within 45 minutes.
