When the United States claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2003, it was the biggest lie one could say, was an act of terror and it killed over half a million Iraqis. There were no WMDs, and the entire invasion was built on fiction, manipulation, and American imperial greed of Iraq’s natural reserves.

But this lie didn’t come out of nowhere. The obsession with Iraq began in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait. George Bush Sr. led a desert war under the banner of “liberation,” only to impose crippling sanctions that starved Iraq’s people while keeping Saddam in power. And when that wasn’t enough, the US codified regime changes into law. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, officially making the toppling of Saddam a U.S. objective. A hundred million dollars were poured into this imperial fantasy.

Then came George W. Bush, the son who finished the father’s war, but with even more lies and destruction.

After the 9/11 attacks, Bush Jr. manipulated global fear and grief to launch a premeditated war against Iraq that had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Iraq had nothing to do with the Twin Towers. But that didn’t stop the Bush administration from fabricating “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction, selling it to the American public, and bulldozing the UN to justify a full-scale invasion.

It was all propaganda. The war was about regime change, oil access, arms contracts, and strategic dominance in the Middle East. Iraq became a graveyard for truth and a testing ground for American military technology.

The Iraq War wasn’t about weapons of mass destruction—it was about oil control, regime change, and showcasing American military power in a region that defied U.S. dominance

What followed was a brutal, illegal occupation that shattered Iraq’s society, institutions, and future:

• Entire cities were razed: Fallujah was bombed with white phosphorus; a chemical weapon.
• Sectarian warfare exploded under US watch, leading to the rise of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and later ISIS, born inside Camp Bucca, a US-run prison.
• Over 500,000 Iraqis died, most of them civilians. Thousands more were maimed, orphaned, or displaced.
• The horrors of the Iraq war weren’t limited to bombs and bullets; countless Iraqi women were raped by U.S. Marines, a brutal and deliberate act of dehumanization that rarely made headlines but will forever remain etched in the memory of a nation humiliated and broken.
• One of the most notorious and well-documented cases.
• A 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qassim, was raped and murdered by U.S. Army soldiers in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. After raping her, the soldiers killed her, her parents, and her younger sister, and set their bodies on fire to cover the crime.
• Iraq’s infrastructure, electricity, water, hospitals; was bombed into ruin.
• US corporations like Halliburton, tied directly to Vice President Dick Cheney, profited billions from reconstruction contracts and oil deals.

Meanwhile, no US official was ever held accountable. The architects of that war, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, walked free, wrote memoirs, and gave lectures. No justice. No trials. Just lies turned into policy. Similarly, how Trump stands on ground with governments like Pakistan nominating him for Nobel Peace Prize.

Why did US invade Iraq? Three reasons.

First, it was about preserving the Petrodollar. The global oil trade is pegged to the US dollar not the Euro, not the Yuan, not gold. That deal underpins the entire modern bond market and props up the US economy. If any oil-rich nation dares sell in another currency like Iraq, like Iran they become a target. Or simply, if they defy the ultimate power house; US.

Second, Iraq was a test lab. “Pentagon officials believed the economic crisis could be solved by ramping up weapons production,” reports from that era confirm. Rumsfeld and company needed a war zone to market-test next-gen military hardware. Iraq was their weapons expo.

Over half a million Iraqis died for a lie—the invasion was built on propaganda, corporate greed, and a deeply rooted imperial agenda masked as liberation

Third, and always central; Israel. Iraq was and Iran is the only regional threats to the apartheid regime occupying Palestine. Saddam had to go. Removing him removed an enemy from Israel’s borders and opened up a direct security threat for Iran. This was strategy, not justice. Today, Iran stands as the only government standing firmly against Israel.

Even Noam Chomsky pointed it out plainly: “If Saddam is a threat now, then why was no one talking about it when he was our ally?” Because he wasn’t inconvenient back then. Just like Noriega, Zia Barre, and the Shah of Iran, US puppets are disposable the second they stop obeying orders.

Back in the 1980s, President Reagan openly funded Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. American media outlets praised bin Laden as a hero, a “freedom fighter” because he was fighting the Soviets. The U.S. armed him. Trained him. Backed him. They built the monster. The CIA supported and armed what would become Al-Qaeda. ISIS? That was born inside US-run prisons. Afghanistan? $2 trillion burned, 2300 dead US soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians killed.

The War on Terror was never about terror. It was a cover. A global blank cheque for American militarism. One by one, countries were invaded, destabilized, sanctioned, and slaughtered all under the guise of “freedom.”

And now the same script is being flipped on Iran. They’re being accused of seeking nukes just like Saddam. They’re being framed as the threat just like Iraq and Afghanistan. And anyone who questions it gets labeled a sympathizer or an enemy.

But if the U.S. lied about Iraq, lied about Afghanistan, funded the very terrorists it later fought why should anyone believe them now?