#TBT: The War In Iraq Draws To A Close

     Between September 12th, 2001, and March 19th, 2003, President George W. Bush made more than 260 false statements about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and being linked to al-Qaeda, the most of the core administration officials who made a total of nearly 1,000, galvanizing public opinion toward a war under false pretenses. In 2007, Bush decided to surge the number of troops in the country in spite of Hussein having been executed, and the nearly decade-long war killed more Americans than 9/11 did. The only difference is that the blood of these troops fell on America's president.

     On December 15th, 2011, the United States, under President Barack Obama, officially ended the War in Iraq, although the troops would not leave the nation until four days later. The peace would not last long. The weak, corrupt Iraqi government and military of the time combined with the Syrian Civil War caused enough destabilization for al Qaeda's remnants (ISI) to form the terrorist group ISIL, which would gain huge swaths of territory in the two nations in its attempts to create a strict, conservative Islamic caliphate. The group prompted the U.S. return to Iraq in 2014 when it committed mass genocide against the ethnic minorities of the region and began brutal executions of coalition military fighters and journalists. 

     ISIL would be mostly defeated by 2016, and by 2019 it would be nothing more than a criminal group conducting isolated car bombings and shootings. Iraq's democratic government is more stable, although corruption has led to unrest among citizens, and the end of the War in Iraq is merely one page in the tragic book of pain and suffering that has befallen Iraq for nearly four decades.