Twenty years ago, the United States led the “coalition of the willing” in an invasion of Iraq, in the shadow of the September 11 2001 attacks on the US by militant Islamic network al-Qaeda.
Western forces justified the war by claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (which would never be found) and intended to help al-Qaeda.
A long, drawn-out war created a power vacuum in Iraq, leading to civil war between Iraqi Shias and Sunnis, and repeated insurgencies against occupying forces. Both were exploited by the emerging militant terror group Daesh, better known as ISIS, whose leaders met and radicalised in US detention camps.
