"Invasion of Iraq"

In R. G. Grant's book, Battle, he wrote an article titled "Invasion of Iraq" about the initial Blitzkrieg Battle the Coalition waged all the way to Baghdad. He begins the story from when Saddam Hussein was being suspected of developing an arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or WMD. The United States, which at the time was still emotionally recovering from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was in a state of "shoot first, ask questions later" foreign policy. Just over a year before the rising tensions with Iraq, U.S. President Bush had begun the "War on Terror". In November of 2002, the U.N. decided that for a peaceful solution, they would have to send weopons inspectors to Iraq to either confirm or deny that Iraq was making WMD. By 2003, the inspectors said that they needed more time, but both the U.S. and Britain decided that time was up. On March 20, 2003, the U.S., Britain, and the other allies of the Coalition invaded Iraq.

Grant gave a vivid image of the intense "shock and awe" campaign that the Coalition waged on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Most of the fighting was done with high tech missiles and precision guided munitions, backed-up by the powerful force of Coalition ground troops and computerized tanks. The Coalition had practically no competition for the skies over the desert and cities of Iraq. They took Baghdad on April 9, twenty days after the Invasion of Iraq began, and took Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, Iraq on the 14. The Coalition suffered 13,543 killed or wounded in this time span, while the Iraqi forces suffered over 21,000 casualties. The battle was swift, brutal, and bloody, and in less than a month, Saddam's regime was toppled. Unfortunately though, this was not the end and as Grant ominously put it,"The invasion sparked international protest against the US and Britain in particular, and began a major insurrection in Iraq against the coalition occupation, which cost many more US and British lives than the invasion itself."