The Iraq War was given this justification in 2003: According to U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the coalition mission was
"to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people."
This was the result of that war:
Sources:
http://www.prosebeforehos.com/government_employee/09/11/perspective-on-911-and-the-invasions-of-iraq-afghanistan/
This was the result of some of the wars that the US has been involved in since WWI.
Turns out that according to the CIA, there is no evidence that there were WMDs in Iraq.
https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/
From the transmittal letter of Charles Duelfer who presented the WMD evidence in the CIA report:
"
Evidence. The problem of discerning WMD in Iraq is highlighted by the prewar misapprehensions of weapons, which were not there. Distant technical analysts mistakenly identified evidence and drew incorrect conclusions. There is also the potential of the obverse problem. Observers may have evidence before them and not recognize it because of unfamiliarity with the subject. Often ISG found no evidence of one thing or another. It may be that a more accurate formulation might be we recognized no evidence. This is a fundamental conundrum in assessing alien circumstances."
What a kick in the pants, right?
The reason for the war was a lie. There were no WMDs, no link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi people were not liberated. The Sunni muslims were also persecuted by the Shia government led by al-Maliki and installed by the US.
Estimates vary on the number of Iraqi civilian casualties between 110,000 to well over a million. No one really counted that carefully.
Estimates of US combat and other casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and the War on Terror are a little less than 7,000.
Do Sunni radicals in Iraq have a reason to be pissed?
Everyone is so outraged by ISIS/ISIL. Where is the outrage for what the US and the international community did in Iraq?