By Mark Scott
Buffalo, NY – Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.
March 19th, 2003. It was also a Wednesday. At 9:45 that evening, the White House released a statement saying bombing raids on Iraq were underway. On April 9th, Saddam Hussein was toppled. And on May 1st, President Bush declared an end to major fighting as he stood under a banner that read, "Mission Accomplished."
Tragically, the vast majority of the nearly four thousand US servicemen and women who have died in Iraq lost their lives AFTER the President gave that speech. And tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens have also been killed.
Claude Welch is a distinguished service professor of Political Science at UB. We reached him at his North Campus office to talk about this anniversary.
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