The Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, to rid Iraq of a dictator and eliminate his weapons of mass destruction. The images remain fresh even as the memories fade - the blinding flash of "shock and awe" bombing, the square-jawed confidence of an American president leading his people into war, the cowering prisoner trembling on the ground in the face of a small piece of American power.
(FILE - Demonstrators chant anti-American slogans as charred and mutilated bodies of U.S. contractors hang from a bridge over the Euphrates River in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, on March 31, 2004. The private security company Blackwater USA triggered a major battle in the Iraq war in 2004 by sending an unprepared team of guards into the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, a move that led to their horrific deaths and a violent response by U.S. forces, says a congressional investigation released Thursday, Sept.)