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Britain went to war again this year but, yet again, no battles were fought on our soil. America was worried about Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq who had led his country to invade its neighbour Kuwait in 1991. They saw him as a threat to peace. Britain, under Tony Blair, agreed with the US President George W Bush. They decided that we should invade Iraq and get rid of Saddam. They told everyone that they believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, probably nuclear weapons of some sort. The United Nations sent in inspectors who found nothing. In fact said they did not believe such weapons existed.
Far better qualified people than I have examined and written about this war. I will just tell you that Iraq had banned inspectors from entering their country in 1998. In 2002 the UN passed a resolution saying inspectors had to be admitted and Iraq started to allow this. Most world leaders saw some co-operation from Iraq but President Bush and Tony Blair said Saddam was not helping and they still had these weapons. On March 17, going against everything the United Nations was set up for, Bush gave Saddam 24 hours to leave Iraq and, when he didn't, on the morning of March 20, the US forces launched their first attack.
By May 1 George Bush declared an end to major combat and the Iraqi leaders fled into hiding. Saddam was found on 13 December 2003 and executed on 30 December 2006. However fighting went on for years. British troops left in 2009 and the final US forces in 2011. By then Iraq was a mess. It became a base for terrorists, a hot spot of civil war and the actions of Blair and Bush did not make anywhere a safer place.
149 British servicemen and women were killed in the fighting. It is estimated that over a quarter of a million Iraqi civilians and soldiers have been killed since the invasion and people are still dying as I write this in September 2017. No weapons of mass destruction, nor facilities to make them, were ever found.
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