​It has been 19 years since the war started by the United States under President George W. Bush and his compatriot Tony Blair, the then British British Prime Minister both of whom insisted on having a showdown on Baghdad.

The date 19 March, 2003 will always be remembered in historical memory. It was a date made by the White House to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power under the pretext he had weapons of mass destruction.

Although many said that Iraq didn't possess such weapons, nobody believed them and so the war started and Saddam Hussein and his government were removed from power by 9 April. It was swift but bloody with plenty of destruction. Of course non of the weapons were found but the United States continued to maintain the military presence in the country till 2011. 

​“Most of the people in my country knew before the US invasion that (weapons of mass destruction) was a pretext, a false flag, that the US and Allied Forces used to make the ends justify the means,” Zaid al-Mahdawi told Anadolu Agency. An Iraqi he was living in Houston who was in Baghdad when the war began.

Nineteen years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, many Iraqis still remember the horrors of war and human rights violations committed by Washington that took a heavy toll on civilians.

On March 20, 2003, the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, promising to bring peace, freedom and democracy to the country. But ever since, chaos and privations have clutched the cradle of this ancient Mesopotamia civilization.

Kadhim al-Adhari, a journalist working for the local al-Adala Newspaper, rebuffed those claims made by the United States, describing the invasion as a "painful memory."
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"Before 2003, Iraq was witnessing a state of security, political and cultural stability, and had infrastructure," al-Adhari told Xinhua.

When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators
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More than 10 years later, I can still recall my brother Sean's face. It was bright red. Furious. Not one given to fits of temper, Sean was in an uproar. He was a father, and he had just heard that Iraqi soldiers had taken scores of babies out of incubators in Kuwait City and left them to die. The Iraqis had shipped the incubators back to Baghdad. A pacifist by nature, my brother was not in a peaceful mood that day. "We've got to go and get Saddam Hussein. Now," he said passionately.

I completely understood his feelings. Although I had no family of my own then, who could countenance such brutality? The news of the slaughter had come at a key moment in the deliberations about whether the US would invade Iraq. Those who watched the non-stop debates on TV saw that many of those who had previously wavered on the issue had been turned into warriors by this shocking incident.

Too bad it never happened. The babies in the incubator story is a classic example of how easy it is for the public and legislators to be mislead during moments of high tension. It's also a vivid example of how the media can be manipulated if we do not keep our guards up.
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The invented story eventually broke apart and was exposed. (I first saw it reported in December of 1992 on CBC-TV's Fifth Estate – Canada's "60 Minutes" – in a program called "Selling the War." The show later won an international Emmy.) But it's been 10 years since it happened, and we again find ourselves facing dramatic decisions about war. It is instructive to look back at what happened, in order that we do not find ourselves deceived again, by either side in the issue.