9781422277171

US forces passed beneath huge stat- ues of crossed swords as they moved into Iraq in 2003.

The Iraq War ISIS did indeed seem to come out of nowhere in 2014. Yet, its seeds as a ter- rorist organization were planted more than 10 years before when the United States invaded Iraq. On March 19, 2003, the United States, Great Britain, and several other countries, went to war to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. At that time, President George W. Bush claimed—wrongly, it would turn out—that Saddam was secretly producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Bush and others said Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Bush also feared Hussein and Iraq were well on their way to building the most powerful WMD of all—a nuclear weapon.

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