March 20, 2003: The Iraq War Begins

March 20, 2003, 20 years ago: President George W. Bush launches the Iraq War, to topple President Saddam Hussein of Iraq from power.

April 9, 2003: Saddam fled, his regime of nearly 34 years coming to an end.

May 1, 2003: Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, beneath a huge banner reading "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED," Bush did not use those words himself, but he did say, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

To be fair, he added, "We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. Our mission continues."

December 13, 2003: Allied forces captured Saddam. But this was not the end of the war, either.

September 30, 2004: With the war still going, with no end in sight, Bush was running for re-election, and debating the Democratic nominee for President, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Bush was asked why he started the war.

He said, "The enemy attacked us." This was part of his continuing telling of the story that Saddam was involved in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, including the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York.

Kerry responded: "Saddam Hussein did not attack us on September 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden did."

Kerry was right. Bush was lying. That should have ended Bush's bid for a 2nd term right there.

November 2, 2004: By a margin of one State in the Electoral College -- and we may never know just how much the Republicans cheated in Ohio, possibly in other States -- Bush was re-elected.

May 16, 2006: The 3rd season finale of the military-themed drama NCIS airs. Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon, was in an explosion, and when he emerges from his coma, he has no memory of anything that happened after a similar thing happened to him while he was serving in the original Iraq War of 1991.

Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) meets with NCIS Director Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly), who says that Gibbs now knows that 15 years have passed, but, seeing the images of the current war on ZNN, that world's fictionalized version of CNN, he says he wants to know why we're still at war in Iraq. Ducky says, "He's not the only one."

January 20, 2009: Bush left office as one of the most unpopular Presidents ever, and Barack Obama became President. He had been elected partly on a pledge to end the Iraq War, which was still going.

June 1, 2009: Dick Cheney, who from 2001 to 2009 had been Bush's Vice President, finally admitted the truth: "I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.

December 18, 2011: President Obama withdrew the last U.S. combat forces from Iraq, leaving behind only a token force in a defensive role. There were 4,507 American soldiers killed, among 32,000 wounded. Other countries' forces in support, including the new Iraqi army: 18,000. Pro-Saddam and later ISIS forces killed: Approximately 37,000. Iraqi civilians killed: Officially, over 110,000, but probably far more.

Benefits to Iraq: They traded one corrupt regime for another, with far fewer extrajudicial killings. In other words, things became better, but still not good.

Benefits to America: The Bush-Cheney Administration's friends, especially energy companies and defense contractors, made a lot of money, and... uh... well... America remembered that war is a bad thing, and that just because you spout slogans and wave flags doesn't make you more patriotic than the people who say that war is a bad thing.