To Topple a Tyrant

It's easy to forget how daunting and dangerous everything seemed on the eve of the Iraq War. U.S. forces were braced for the worst. Hardly anyone believed Iraq's claims that it no longer possessed any weapons of mass destruction—untold stockpiles of lethal biological and chemical agents—and there was no doubt that Saddam Hussein would use whatever he had. And American servicemen and -women spent months enduring real and simulated gas attacks. Hadn't the Butcher of Baghdad already gassed entire Iraqi villages in the 1980s when they had defied his rule?

But as American forces raced across the desert to Baghdad, they encountered a far different threat—mostly scattered militias, often in civilian clothes, attacking strung-out supply lines with AK-47s and car bombs. The pinprick attacks were unsettling. Still, they hardly seemed a threat to the mighty war machine America had assembled. Less than two months after the initial "shock and awe" bombing runs, President Bush would announce from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln an end to major combat operations, under a banner declaring MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

In the fall of 2002, Congress authorized the attack on Iraq. While debate raged at the United Nations, troops readied themselves for war.

Army National Guard Spc. Michael G. Mihalakis
Nov. 2, 2002, Fort Leonard Wood, MO. (Basic Training)