The 2003 war against Iraq was based on a lie. The US claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. A war of aggression, that the US never was penalized for. How are the people affected by this war faring today?
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00:00I don't want to show my face because of the situation in the country.
00:15The voices of the armed groups are louder than the government's.
00:19So an Iraqi should always be careful, scared.
00:28We were told that we needed to bring democracy to Iraq.
00:30An axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
00:35I remember George W. Bush making a joke,
00:39looking around his office for weapons of mass destruction,
00:42like opening desk drawers and cabinets.
00:44Ha ha ha, not here.
00:48Saddam Hussein, he was definitely a dictator.
00:53In the beginning, people were happy to be free.
00:57As a sniper, people are just kind of hot blobs of white.
01:02It's hard to see what they're holding or carrying.
01:05I've killed people planning bombs and preparing to ambush our troops,
01:09but I've also killed people changing their tire on their car.
01:16Is there really anyone who wouldn't fight for the sake of their country?
01:20That's impossible.
01:26The U.S. described operations in Iraq as a war justified under international law
01:31and deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
01:37How has that affected those who were put on the front lines,
01:41risking their lives for a lie?
01:56The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
01:58The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:00The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:02The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:04The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:06The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:08The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:10The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:12The U.S. deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region on deceitful pretenses.
02:14Right now...
02:16Right now...
02:18Right now...
02:34During the war in 2003,
02:36around the middle or end of March,
02:38I went to my uncle's house
02:40because the roads were closed.
02:42There were airstrikes everywhere.
02:48I found him eating rice and dates.
02:51There was no place to get food or bread.
02:54Nothing was available.
03:00We had just started eating our meal
03:03when rockets fell near the government office.
03:12A heavy rocket struck nearby.
03:16I was so scared that I stopped eating,
03:18but he carried on.
03:20I told him, don't you care?
03:22He told me every 10 minutes there is a missile
03:25and death is inevitable.
03:42When you're a medic, you see people.
03:59You see human beings.
04:13I remember one guy came through
04:15and I just kept looking at him.
04:23He was dying right in front of me
04:26and he wasn't an American soldier.
04:30All I could think about was my grandfather
04:34because he was that age.
04:36He was somebody's grandfather.
04:40It was really hard.
04:43That was probably one of the hardest patients
04:45that I worked on
04:48because I already knew that that family
04:51was going to lose a father, a grandfather,
04:56an uncle, a brother,
04:59just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
05:02He was just an innocent bystander.
05:10I was not a very good shot in basic training,
05:14so it's interesting that eventually I became a sniper.
05:22They were clear enemy combatant.
05:24They were trying to flank me, my position,
05:26and I predicted where they were going to move
05:29and waited for them,
05:31and as soon as they got out in the open,
05:33I pulled the trigger, took them down,
05:36and I was filled with this sense of satisfaction.
05:39I did it.
05:41I was watching this guy I shot and he wasn't dead.
05:44He was on his back and he was arched his back
05:47and spinning, kicking with his feet
05:50and spinning in a circle and just in pain.
05:54I was horrified and I shot him eight more times
05:58to get him to stop moving.
06:01It's just like that I've never,
06:05I never got that feeling of satisfaction again.
06:09Of all the people I killed in Iraq,
06:12I've never once felt that another time.
06:16In 2001, 9-11 shocked the U.S. and the world.
06:22Alongside Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan,
06:26America singled out another suspect.
06:29Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America
06:32and to support terror.
06:34The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax
06:38and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade.
06:46On the 20th of March 2003,
06:48the U.S. launched a war against Iraq.
06:51Together with Britain and a coalition of the willing,
06:54they called it Operation Iraqi Freedom.
07:00It was the ugliest invasion.
07:03It's proved by the fact that the entire region
07:07has now been destabilized by their presence there.
07:11When they occupied Baghdad,
07:14they occupied the entire region.
07:17When the regime fell in Iraq,
07:20they occupied the whole region.
07:23When the regime fell in Syria,
07:26they occupied the whole region.
07:29When the regime fell in Iraq,
07:32many other regimes fell with it.
07:36In the beginning, however, people were happy to be free.
07:39They were happy to vote, you know.
07:42They had the blue thumbs after they voted and things like that.
07:46Where I think it went wrong is we stayed there too long.
07:51We didn't really have, like, a full-on plan
07:54for how to, um, how to help them
07:59after we relieved them from Saddam Hussein.
08:03We didn't find any weapons of mass destruction.
08:06But we looked. We looked pretty hard.
08:09They called it terrorism. There was retaliation.
08:12If Americans kill Iraqis, they say it's fighting terrorism.
08:15But if Iraqis fight back and Americans kill them,
08:18that's called self-defense.
08:20None of my leaders are being held accountable for Iraq.
08:25The U.S. justified its war against Iraq as a preemptive move.
08:29The aim was to prevent Saddam Hussein
08:32from carrying out an attack with weapons of mass destruction,
08:35a lie that even the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, Colin Powell,
08:40indirectly admitted in an interview with Al Jazeera in 2011.
08:55By definition, what happened in Iraq in 2003
08:59was a war of aggression in violation of international law.
09:09February 2022.
09:11Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
09:15Here, too, it all began with a lie.
09:19Here, too, it all began with a lie.
09:44No sooner had the invasion begun,
09:46Sooner had the invasion begun, Russian aggression was denounced by most Western countries.
09:51But a United Nations resolution condemning Moscow's actions exposed clear polarity.
09:57Many countries in the global south abstained from voting.
10:01This included nations such as China and India, representing most of the global population.
10:16For some observers, this global polarization can be traced back to the Iraq War, a view
10:22shared by British Labour Party MP and peace activist Andrew Murray.
10:28Of course, there's a moral double standard when dealing with the situation in Ukraine.
10:46And the situation in Iraq that I served at, I mean, you know, we have the gall to, you
10:53know, say that somebody, basically another nation doing the exact same atrocity that
10:58we did is illegal and one isn't.
11:02I was 25 years old when I joined the U.S. Army in 2001, one month before September 11th.
11:14When I came into this world, Saddam Hussein was the ruler.
11:25Whether that was good or bad, it was something we had to live with.
11:30We used to hear when we were kids that he ruled with a fist of fire and iron.
11:39He sat atop the country and no one else could say otherwise.
11:43There was one ruling party, and that was the Baath Party.
12:11We as Iraqis could not give different opinions on political matters.
12:14There was only one opinion, so we learned to stay silent.
12:32I didn't end up in the army until I was almost 23.
12:38I wanted to be like a GI Jane, so that was the best way I could prove myself.
12:44If I could do that, then I knew that I could do anything else in life.
12:58During the war in 2003, I had a position in the military.
13:09One of the officials called us together and told us, brothers, the enemy has arrived and
13:13is determined.
13:15War is inevitable.
13:16The invading forces have reached the Gulf and have prepared themselves.
13:23We heard that American soldiers had landed nearby, at the airport.
13:32The soldiers who were at the airport were all killed because the Americans bombarded
13:37the area with prohibited weapons, radioactive, phosphorus or cluster bombs.
13:49These cluster bombs, if fired, explode before they hit the ground.
13:53They killed many people.
14:14I hid myself in one of the schools nearby on the airport road, which is now close to
14:19the Green Zone.
14:25I raised my head to try to see what it was.
14:29I'd seen American soldiers on TV before, but I hadn't seen them with my own eyes.
14:38Then I was seeing Americans with tanks, hummers and bulletproof cars entering the presidential
14:45palace.
14:46It made me very sad, tears fell from my eyes.
14:53I cried.
14:55I cried hard due to exhaustion and fatigue because we lost the battle.
14:59We lost the country.
15:06On the 1st of May 2003, from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, President
15:12George W. Bush declared the official end of the war in Iraq.
15:16But the real war had only just begun.
15:23So I deployed to Iraq January 2004.
15:25We were in this massive convoy, lined up all the way across the desert on this highway
15:33and crossed into Iraq.
15:41Seemingly living on the side of the road, a group of them were yelling, you know, George
15:45Bush number one, USA number one, USA number one.
15:52We drove past them and then they switched to giving us the middle finger and cursing
15:58at us and throwing rocks.
16:00I was like, whoa.
16:04After encountering more and more Iraqis heading north, even just that first day, it was clear
16:12that we weren't being seen as liberators and, you know, saviors and people who were there
16:21to help.
16:22We were seen as more of the problem.
16:28The war turned into a longer occupation.
16:32After the dissolution of the Iraqi army in May 2003, militias formed in the same year
16:38to wage an asymmetric war against the U.S.
16:42Starting in October 2004, these armed groups included al-Qaeda in Iraq.
16:47Damn you.
16:48First hands over here.
16:49First hands.
16:50Take it all.
17:02No, six.
17:03Take, go for it.
17:04I will.
17:05I will.
17:06You're first.
17:07You're first.
17:08Take it all.
17:09Sweet cheese.
17:10Mmm.
17:11I appreciate that.
17:12We're good now.
17:14We were there from January of 2005 to January of 2006.
17:23And I was in Baghdad.
17:24We were near Sadr City.
17:26We were on FOB loyalty.
17:30Sadr City is probably the city that hated us the most.
17:35When I would go to treat children in that city, I would have bricks and chunks of rocks
17:43and cement thrown at me and being hit the whole time while I was trying to treat someone.
17:52Everybody in Iraq was a threat, women, children, men just alike.
17:58All of them would shoot you.
18:01All of them would carry a gun.
18:03They would definitely put bombs inside of animals and send them towards the FOBs.
18:14We always called the Marines like, you know, they were just kind of like bullet catchers.
18:19Well, because they just go in first and they just start shooting.
18:24Well, that's their job, right?
18:26I know.
18:27What separates the Marine Corps from any other branch is when you're taking fire.
18:38The other branches, when you're under fire, they take cover.
18:43The Marines don't take cover.
18:45The Marines go after where the fire is coming from.
18:53We would clear like over 150 homes and buildings a day.
19:03Like it was just nonstop kicking in doors and detaining people and that was it.
19:10I mean, it was just, it was nuts.
19:20I got to know some Iraqi people.
19:22It's hard to have a fair relationship and discussion with somebody when you're wearing
19:30body armor, have a Kevlar helmet and a rifle in your hands.
19:40The Americans brought us destruction, religious division, hunger, discrimination and racism.
19:46So many terrible things.
19:53We did a lot of missions on the roof of a Iraqi police station in Hib-Hib.
19:58And I got to know one of the police officers there who joined the police, the Iraqi police,
20:05to earn a dowry to get married.
20:07The guy just rode a motorcycle, didn't have any other form of vehicle.
20:11So I'd try to hook him up with some things because he was always having problems riding
20:17his bike around Iraq.
20:19But it was a good relationship.
20:23After Abu Ghraib was exposed, he stopped talking to me.
20:30The U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq hit the headlines in 2004.
20:35Detainees had been systematically tortured in violation of the Geneva Convention.
20:40The only sentences handed down were to junior officers allegedly acting on their own initiative,
20:45not to anyone in politics or military leadership.
20:49However, before that in 2002, the U.S. government had approved what it termed enhanced interrogation
20:55techniques and its war on terror.
21:01My best friend Regina and the civil affairs team was out on a mission.
21:09And she was hit by one of these new explosives.
21:17It blew her and the gunner Wiley into many, many pieces.
21:25And I remember I was outside when they towed her truck back onto the FOB.
21:32And it's like I already knew.
21:35Because when you're towing a truck back, it's not good.
21:42And I remember her commander walking towards me.
21:53And he told me what had happened.
22:01It's two days before Christmas and about three weeks before we go home.
22:10And none of them can pull themselves together enough to remove their bodies from the vehicle.
22:21And so they asked me to do it.
22:31I don't know any of the guys in my unit that are still, you know, doesn't have high levels
22:36of anxiety, PTSD, depression issues.
22:41A lot of them have experienced homelessness, incarceration, have gone to jail, substance
22:50abuse issues, a lot of suicide, a lot of death by overdose.
22:57You know, it's like every day having to relive Iraq over and over again.
23:05Yeah.
23:08When my oldest daughter graduated, I suddenly remembered her first day in the first grade.
23:28There had been an explosion nearby.
23:30It was scary.
23:33We were inside the house and said, God willing, nothing will happen.
23:38Then I remembered that I have a child who's at school.
23:42I called out to my wife and told her, our daughter, we forgot about her, run.
23:49The explosion had been very close to the school.
23:53We couldn't reach our daughter.
23:55We didn't know if she was alive or was martyred and dead with the other victims.
23:59It was a hard day.
24:02Thanks to God, she was in class with the other students.
24:05All the windows were shattered.
24:07There was only slight injury.
24:16Lives in chaos, refugees, you know, a vacuum that created ISIS eventually, like refugee
24:23problem that changed the dynamics of politics in Europe, you know, just this horror that
24:30occurred.
24:32The geopolitical reverberations are tangible to this day, far beyond Iraq and the wider
24:38region.
24:39To date, according to international research, more than 4.5 million people have died in
24:45the wars on terror that followed 9-11.
24:48The victims were killed either in direct combat or as a result of war.
24:53Many were women and children.
24:56Large areas of Iraq are contaminated by depleted uranium munitions.
25:01Children there are born with deformities.
25:05The economy is in ruins, spelling poverty and hunger.
25:09The U.S. has never made reparation payments to Iraq or compensated individual victims.
25:22The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq, I
25:30mean of Ukraine, Iraq, anyway.
25:44Now everything is different.
25:46We changed something and in exchange we lost something else.
25:52We exchanged it for a life that enables us to have Pepsi-Cola, provides us mobile phones.
25:57None of that adds value.
26:00It's chaos.
26:03Life was better before.
26:24If I were able to meet up with people in Iraq these days, while it would be nice to sit
26:31down and have a meal with them and some of their wonderful tea, part of me feels like
26:38it might not even be possible to ever do that.
26:45Because they might just kill me as soon as I get there.
26:50I just, I want to apologize for my personal participation in that hurt and I want to apologize
26:57for my nation's participation in it.
26:59And I love your country, I love Iraq and I can see past the barbed wire and the blown
27:05up buildings and just see wonder.
27:15Every Iraqi, every person hopes for wellness, stability and development for their country.
27:23There is no stability if we are not safe.
27:32Americans wouldn't listen to my advice but if they happen to hear me I'd say stay away
27:36from the region, leave its people alone to live in peace.
27:53These boots were never comfortable, stained with the sandy dirt, sewage and blood.
28:07The closer to leaving the longer it takes.
28:09IED contact, RPG contact, mortars contact, VBIT contact, home.