BIG TALK: The Iraq War PART ONE

Production. Before we start today's episode, we would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we're recording today, the Gadigal people, and pay our respects to elders past and present.

Hi, I'm Hannah. And I'm Sarah. Welcome to Big Talk. Big talk deep dives into the news stories that you've heard of, but you don't know all the serious and salacious details about. We revisit the most shocking headlines of the past that have shaped the world we know today. And in this episode, we're looking at the Iraq War.

Big breaths. Big breaths. So when we started this year, if we'd cast our minds back to the very beginning of January. You know what? It's it's been seven years since the beginning of January. I Texted Hatter and I said, Hey, so I think we I think we start with the Iraq war because um

It feels particularly relevant right now and I think it's interesting when you research these things when you're uh old stories and it is that whole conversation around history repeating itself. And there was a lot of conversation, especially with Venezuela, about

what we can learn and the the similarities and the differences at the moment between something like the Iraq war and what's unfolding in present day. And I just texted you back and said I thought you'd never ask. I I have been so interested.

This has been probably one of the most research heavy ones we've done. Um, top three, I'd say. We've only done this for like a year. Every single it's like it's like watching someone's light leave their eyes. Every time she comes in for a new big door, she goes, This one broke me in new ways. It's kind of like doing an intense university assignment every month. And I go His street channel channel Sarah comes in with like a fedora on. No, but now I'm in an office as well.

It's so funny because I'll be like sitting at my desk. I look very troubled. I look very troubled and I'm very like I'm in a vortex of research. And people will be like, hey, and I look up with them and I look almost upset and confused that they've interrupted me and they go, What are you working on? I go, the Iraq war. She's heard Google search history is just George Bush. Like genuinely. And they're like, Really? And I'm like, Yeah, I didn't know where to start. I've started with

Started with Al Gore and George Bush's two thousand election, three years prior to the war even starting. You know what? The Al Gore Bush election talked dirty to me, my favorite topic. So thank God we're starting this. Should we get to the Sort of stu I start I got in it was a tease for the pitch. Let's do the pitch. Let's do the pitch.

The Iraq War is one of the most consequential political decisions of the twenty-first century. And for many listeners, the Iraq war unfolded when we were toddlers or in early primary school. And for many others listening to this episode, you'll remember this clearly. It was narrated to us all through breaking news graphics, terror alerts, and the language of fear. The consequences of the Iraq war didn't end once troops withdrew. It continues to shape global politics and public trust.

So in this episode of Big Talk, we want to try, try and dive into the questions What did the Iraq war actually set in motion and how did it influence our world today? Also, what was Australia's involvement? And we're gonna begin with nine-eleven and how that collective trauma reshaped American and Australian foreign policy and public psychology overnight. The Bush administration framed the world in binaries. Good versus evil, freedom versus terror, and used that to sell the invasion of Iraq.

From there we examine how and why Iraq became a breeding ground for extremism after the invasion and why resentment towards the United States still runs so deep across the Middle East. We also want to zoom out to the present, look at the comparisons to Venezuela and other modern crises, asking whether those parallels are fair. More importantly, we want to interrogate the precedents set by George W. Bush.

Like executive overreach, the erosion of international law, and how these precedents have re-emerged in different forms during the Trump era.

Oh let's Whoa. I know you're sort of like where, as we sort of alluded to before, we we start with George W. Bush, but at the very, very top, I wanna talk about these Venezuela comparisons. Because I feel like this like thread to the modern day will be throughout this entire series. I think it was a big reason why we were interested in covering Iraq and at large Bush's presidency, because we know, as we said, history always repeats itself. Obviously they were both US invasions.

And yes, there'll be things throughout this that make you think this all sounds a bit familiar, such as messages of liberation and democracy and defying international law. the convenience of these lands in question sitting on huge energy reserves and being strategically located. And we know that many of these themes have been prominent in President Trump's

press conferences, especially after the day of the after the invasion of Venezuela, where he reiterated the same objectives of the US invasion as Iraq. I don't even know if you saw this, but there was also a US senator That accidentally said Iraq instead of Venezuela in an interview. A very Freudian slip. Slip. But I think it's also really important to say at the top here that there are many differences, especially in terms of military strategy, international law, and the economic intent.

For me, I also think one of the most striking differences is that with Iraq, there was at least At least an attempt from the US to tie itself into knots to try and gain Security Council approval and make it make sense in a l in legal terms. Now there is kind of only silence from US officials on that front. But it is way more complicated than that, and I think this is a really important story to tell and remember. And so

Let's take it back to the very start. We have to start with President George Bush and who he was. And just at the top, when we say George Bush, we mean George W. Bush. not to be confused with his dad, George H. W. Bush, who was the 41st president of America. He was the eldest son of a sitting president. He grew up in Connecticut. He flew warplanes in the Texas Air National Guard in his twenties.

He went to Harvard Business School and then he did the very Texas thing. He went into oil. Yeah. He later became co-owner of a major league baseball team, the Texas Rangers, which does feel important only because it sort of helped to improve his image. and when researching, most outlets described him as a well liked individual. Yeah, fairly

Uncontroversial at this stage, I think. We're also talking about quite a different time period in media, in you know, the landscape again of fear. We're gonna get into that. He served two four-year terms as governor, the first Texas governor to ever do that. And he won re-election in a like a landslide. It was massive. Let's talk about the 2000 election. Bush was up against Al Gore. An inconvenient truth.

I love this story for immediately. You should ever like that's a slightly early hen-up. Tell me about that. Okay, so Al Gore was the Democratic nominee at the time, George Bush being the Republican nominee. Now Al Gore is like actually one of the most progressive forward thinkers on the climate front, one of like most popular talks, like Docu sort of talks of all time as an inconvenient truth.

I'm quite a huge Al Gore fan, but he was, you know, this was the most controversial election result potentially of all time. Oh yeah. Actually, that's sorry, I'm ignoring Trump in that. But like it it is. It still is one of the like most sliding doors moments in history. No, I was fascinated looking into this, and I also want to start with the very tiny fun facts. No, please. There's so many fun facts to be had in this.

At the end of last year my boyfriend was at a lunch with Al Gore. You told me this. Like I love our muffin man Harry, but that really got to me. Oh, that really got to me. Harry takes my garga ticket because I'm sick. And he gets to have lunch with Algor. No, it was super, super random that he was at that lunch. I don't even fully understand how and why he was there.

And I was like, I was dying to hear. I was like, tell me about it. Like what did he say? Can I come? And he was like, No, you can't come. Like I'm a plus one. Like you can't come And then I was like, afterwards, tell me about it. What was he like? And he was like, actually a really good speaker. Yeah. The reason was so high.

is because Gore and Bush is a very juicy story in its own right. We did actually have it have it down as its own big talk. And it uh you know what? And we may. This is a beginning campaign to make this a big talk. We'll give it some breathing space between this, but yes. I do think it's really irrelevant to include this story because it did contribute to serious democratic republican divide and also the concept of government overreaching its powers, which

feels very relevant when comparing to the Trump playbook now. The election was chaos. On election night, TV anchors everywhere just kept repeating the words, it's just too close to call. And eventually it came down to Florida. Deeply concerning when that happens. No one ever I've never in my life wanted to like it's like it's it's like, no offense. I've lived there for a long time. It's like saying it all comes down to Queensland. You go, fuck

Florida is Great Taylor Swift song. A great Taylor Swift song. I love Miami. It's it's a very confusing place. But the final margin came down to five hundred and thirty-seven votes. Out of 5.96 million votes cast in that state. That is a margin of zero point zero zero nine percent. Sorry, can we just say

Five point nine six million costs in that state, right? In that state. Like that's it the whole country came down to five hundred and fifty-seven votes. The whole country came down. And look, it's a little confusing to explain,'cause you have explained like the Electoral College and the way blah blah blah blah. We actually did an episode explaining this.

separately last year about how elections work in the US. But yes, it came down to five hundred and thirty seven votes. Not five hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred and thirty seven. Like insane. So at first Florida declared Bush the winner, and then Florida was like, actually, sorry, there's been a confusion. Especially in Palm Beach County, where officials This is my favorite part of the story. Introduced a brand new ballot design called the butterfly ballot. Now.

I'm not saying I am blaming a ballot system entirely, but I am saying that this is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. So the the butterfly ballot was designed so that the alignment of the names and then the box that you tick weren't sitting across from each other. So a lot of voters didn't actually understand that and they thought they were voting for one candidate and were accidentally voting for another.

Conspiracy theorists would argue that that was sus, right? I don't even think that's conspiracy theorists. I think that is sus as. I would say that is like a major failing of the PDF Microsoft system. The whoever designed that, the butterfly palette's such a beautiful name for something so ineffective. But butterflies didn't deserve that. Actually I want to say it's also bizarre because I think Palm Beach was like a relatively safe area for Democrats as well, like a Democrat vote.

That's the crazy quote now as well, yeah. Given the close margins, state law required a recount, and Gore wanted them to be recounted by hand. Even more sus, though, the governor of Florida was Jeb Bush, George Bush's own brother. It's a cat of family. But like sorry, what the fuck is with that family? Like they're all politicians. President

President to be Governor of Florida. Some people really act like a monarchy for a democracy, you know? Right? Their catch ups must be insufferable. Aga worst people ever. Sorry, you wanna be a pod I love politicians. But my family do not agree all like that and I think that's the best thing about them. But like imagine if it was just you copy and paste it, but like give you give you different states and then p have Christmas together. That sounds awful. The bonbon.

Shit. Okay, anyway, keep going. Again. Not saying Jeb was involved though. Oh, please. But it was weird. That's a conflict of interest. It's not even that's weird, conspiracy theorist alert. It's like that's fucked. But it was weird that the Secretary of State in Florida was also a Republican ally of his. And she was the one with the power to certify the election result.

And she's the one who announced Bush as the winner while recounts were still being challenged, as backed by his brother Jeb, who also then refused calls for an independent authority to do the recount. Okay, like There are so many layers to this which are blatantly wrong. Blatantly wrong. Shockingly, the recount never actually finished because the Supreme Court then stepped in and declared Bush as president.

Fucking crazy. Obviously this is controversial because it meant that the Supreme Court actively interfered when it should have been left to state processes. Also

that the Conservative judges all sided with Bush, which very much made it feel like an ideological split rather than the principle. And there's a lot more to do with the Supreme Court ruling We don't really have the time to get into all of it, but it was especially weird that the Supreme Court, after making the decision, said this should not be used as a precedent in the future. That is- Unheard of. Like Courts do not say, Hey, so this rule applies now.

But please don't quote us on this later. It's literally Don't hold us to it. It's literally like me doing something then turning to my friends and saying, don't try this. You're not allowed. Don't try this. I don't condone. Like. Critics have of course argued that this made the decision feel partisan. and that this raises questions about the neutrality of the Supreme Court.

And many analysts also still believe that a recount would have been, a, more fair, but also could have definitely resulted in a completely different outcome. And it is crazy to think when we're about to tell this story. That that's such a sliding doors moment. This I I also think like we didn't need to include this, right? But it's such a thing to both of us, right? Well, it's interesting and I think it's important to include because when we're talking about how

so much of this era and like history repeating itself has been used in modern day to set precedents. Yes. This is important. It's also good to know I think on from the outset that like Bush wasn't like a resounding victory. You know, like when we look at like this was not someone who came in like slam dunk. And I think what this also showed is that courts could decide an election. Yeah. And that the fight really wasn't over until you could get it into the courts. And I think

Knowing that the Supreme Court could be so decisive, when we're now looking at Trump and what he could have learnt from this, he then stacked the Supreme Court in his favor. And I'm not saying that Bush and Trump are the same, but I'm saying that Trump clearly has used this framework and fucking run with it. Yeah. But I also think when talking about this, it's because Becoming president under unusual circumstances.

like this election that dominated headlines and was so controversial and scraping in meant that he was under a cloud of uncertainty and he would have had a motivation to define himself. Yeah. He got in. He got in, we know that, we know how now. What did he actually do? What did he do?

So Bush entered office with like a quite a clear agenda. A missile defense program, expanded oil drilling, cutting funding for some scientific and STEM research. rejecting the Kyo rejecting the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, passing the No Child Left Behind Act on education. and delivering the largest tax cut in American history with the idea that Americans needed more money in their pockets after the dot-com bubble burst. Then 9-11 happened.

So September eleventh, two thousand and one fundamentally changed everything. Again, I was we were three years old when nine eleven happened. So it is tough to talk about from this perspective of like not actually engaging with the media as it unfolded. But we know close to three thousand people died.

What happened was that nineteen militants from the Islamist extremist group Al Qaeda Hijacked four commercial planes, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, another one into the Pentagon, while the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. I think it's deeply fascinating for me to think that life as we know it, really the only life we've known, was completely shaped by this devastating, deeply traumatic event. Even chatting in the office.

I'm sitting close to journalists and other journalists now and just describing what it was like for them being in newsrooms when this happened. And just the way it was confusion at first and then people screaming, just like staring at the what was happening and screaming and and

The chaos. I think it's one of those things that everybody remembers where they were when it happened, if you were, you know, able to remember. But like when there was Sharing these anecdotes, it was things like you were watching the footage

You're like, what is that? And then you realise like these dots on the screen were like people. Yeah. I think there was clearly there was a life before nine eleven and then there was a life after. And the world was really never the same. And I also think sometimes I underestimate that a little bit. And I and I know now from when from researching nine eleven in Iraq, that this is a really good reminder to how genuine the fears of terrorism were.

And I think na when really chatting about this all again, I was like, yeah, this does make so much sense as to why the following events happened. Looks our six seven floors were taken out. And there's more six explosions right now. Hold on, people are wrong. Hold on just a moment. We've got an explosion inside.

The building's exploding right now, you got people running up the street. I don't want to tell what's going on. Right oh my god, another plane has just hit it held another building. Flew right into the middle of it. Explosion.

You know, Bush's approval ratings skyrocketed in the wake of nine eleven. He was now a leader during a global crisis and positioned as a wartime leader overnight. And in nightly addresses to the nation, his message was clear, like we will retaliate. Like that was clear as day. Good evening. Today our fellow citizens, our way of life our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil

Despicable acts of terror. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorist who committed these acts.

And those who harbor them. In his following September 20 speech to Congress, Bush demanded the Taliban in Afghanistan deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of Al-Qaeda who hide in your land. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and hand over every terrorist and every person in their support structure to appropriate authorities. Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda.

But it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated. Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what they see right here in this chamber. A democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms. And what he's doing in this then is also underscoring that America's fight was with Al Qaeda, not Islam.

So he directly says in a few quotes like things like The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government supports them. So there was an effort made to make the distinction and what's probably r like I would say what is central to this here. Is that Bush also said that America had been targeted, and I quote, because we love freedom and they hate freedom. And I I think

That idea is fascinating because it sparked a much bigger question. How do you keep people both free and safe? And at what point does safety eat away at civil liberties? It was that thinking that became known as the Bush doctrine. So the Bush doctrine was a declaration of the global war on terror. And crucially, there was very little distinction made between terrorists themselves.

And the countries they might live in. Again, so you've got that quote versus the actual doctrine where like he can say things, but then the the actual doctrine misses this. It was very much a yeah, but it is also about the country. It was like the territory was its own thing. It was like

Afghanistan, Iraq, all of these countries were guilty just because a leader might be there on that territory. Like so The deputy secretary of defense, uh, who was called Wolfwitz, expanded on Bush's comments that he made during that national address and he said I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable. But removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism.

And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign. That I think is very telling because again, we're already talking about. Dr like direct quotes like ending states. We also know that this wasn't just America's war. The message that Bush delivered to the world was very blunt. You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. Like it was that binary. Yeah. So then where did Australia land in that? Very much with them.

So the Prime Minister at the time was John Howard. And he was actually in the United States at the time of the attacks. I didn't know that. Yeah. And he described Australia's involvement as a complete no brainer. The government invoked the ANZES Treaty for the very first time in history. And that decision sent more than twenty six thousand Australian troops into a twenty year war on terror. And when we say war on terror, that's including Afghanistan.

Forty one Australians lost their lives. And I think that decision, really the decision of the Bush Doctrine, reshaped global politics, foreign policy, and Australia's military for decades. As many of us know, the war on terror really began with Afghanistan. Within weeks of nine eleven, the US launched airstrikes and at the time the country was being run by the Taliban who were protecting Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.

Then ground troops were sent, not only from the US, but from Australia and to the UK as well. And initially this worked. The Taliban were chased out of major cities, a new US-friendlier government was installed, and Taliban policies, like especially around women's rights, were formally undone. Fewer than 100 American troops died in the initial phase, but also as we know, this was far from over. US troop numbers on the ground were high still. Casualties were continuously on the rise.

And what was meant to be quite a swift retaliation turned into a decades long occupation. Afghanistan also is honestly its own big talk series, but the headline facts matter. Osama bin Laden wasn't found and killed until twenty eleven. The second is Australian forces didn't fully withdraw until twenty twenty one. And third is, within weeks of that withdrawal, the Taliban retook control of the country. Twenty years.

Trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives, and essentially the country ended up right where it started. In twenty twenty one, actually speaking to Hack, former Prime Minister John Howard said sending troops into combat wasn't something he regretted at all, really, that it demonstrated Australia's commitment as a loyal ally to the US. He said, I think we have a relationship with the most powerful country in the world that does provide an ultimate security guarantee.

He also said to ABC's seven thirty in twenty twenty one that the mission of the war in Afghanistan was not a failure because it prevented nine eleven style attacks on the West. But it's also really important to put at the front of this as well. The Australian soldiers' experiences and impacts on them. We know tens of thousands of Australians were deployed to Afghanistan since two thousand and one.

Operation Slipper, later named Operation High Road, claimed the lives of forty-one Australians, and 261 were wounded, and at least 500 have since taken their own lives. Uh one of the testimonies we should mention is Joe King, a former Australian combat medic, who spoke to The Guardian and he said the commitment to fighting after the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 when he was deployed was a joke. And he has suffered crippling PTSD because of his guilt.

He said in this interview with The Guardian, I'm fucking sick of it just ruminating in my head. They were never going to hold that country. If you cannot help the people through military means, then you do the right thing and you educate them, because that was the only way to fix Afghanistan. The Taliban know that if you stop education, you stop the progress of a country, which is why they attack the education system so viciously. They are opposed to educated people who are harder to brainwash.

I also want to reassess what was happening back in the US in the aftermath of 9-11. Um, and I think this is where the USA Patriot Act. comes into play. So Claude, who's a senior journalist here at Listener, actually said, it was quite funny, she said this was almost like the birth of the Karen.

I love when journalists just know a topic so well that they can really riff on it, you know, like So the Patriot Act was passed just weeks after nine eleven and it was a law that massively expanded the US government's powers in the name of national security. So what it allowed was the surveillance of American citizens. There was wiretapping without traditional warrants, monitoring emails, phone calls, financial records, and detaining people suspected of terrorism related activity.

So to recap, Americans could be watched, trapped, and arrested without ever being formally charged. This is also where Guantanamo Bay comes in. So the US established the detention camp. Guantanamo Bay, to hold people accused of terrorism or terrorist affiliation deliberately outside of the US legal system. At its peak, it housed over seven hundred detainees, many held for years without trial.

In 2013, the story did actually get a lot crazier. There were whistleblower revelations that showed that surveillance went way beyond what a most Americans realized. And there was programs like Prism that revealed mass data collection on ordinary citizens. Like there was no reason for that. Also, for some context, this top secret prism program was run by the national security agency that obtained direct access to the systems of Google, to Facebook, to Apple, and to other US internet giants.

Moving on to a but if we were to move on to a slightly more positive note, I guess, Congress did eventually ban the use of torture. Thumbs up. Why was it there in the first place? Definitions of that are a little questionable though. Waterboarding? Apparently debatable. Um There are so many films and documentaries made about the US's use of torture. And again, I think the question is like how much freedom, like when we're talking about the way they were surveilling citizens.

How much freedom do you give up to feel safe?

Then Bush widens the scope. Beyond Afghanistan and keeping tabs on US citizens, during his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush introduced a phrase that would be repeated. A million times throughout the decade, the axis of evil. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction. So who and what is this axis of evil? It's Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Bush accuses all three countries of harboring terrorists or pursuing weapons of mass destruction, even though none of them had direct ties to nine eleven.

Iraq, because of the opposition of dictator Saddam Hussein and belief they had these weapons of mass destruction, Iran was accused of supporting terrorism and pursuing their own weapons as well, and North Korea was accused of developing nuclear weapons. Later, the net actually widened again, with China and Russia increasingly framed as ideological threats. This is like I just wanna be really clear. It's all confusing and hard to explain.

But at a most basic level here, the Bush doctrine wasn't just about defense anymore, but more so this idea of spreading freedom to countries and regimes that didn't have freedom. But that then raises a lot of questions. What was Bush's definition of freedom? And who gets to decide which countries are free enough? And and I guess then ultimately the question is, what does that allow the US to decide on behalf of the populations of these nations?

And what is their reign of power in pursuing that? And and just to try and understand what Bush's definition of a freedom was, you need to look at some of his major addresses. That includes in 2005, when he delivered his second inaugural address after being re-elected in 2004, a key element of the speech being a freedom agenda. And in his roughly 21 minute speech, he mentions freedom

Twenty-seven times. It's insane. This era arguably cemented America's obsession with freedom as their identity, like the bull, the eagle, like the, you know, Starfangled banner, the image, right? It's so strong, the symbolism there. It shifted the American narrative from we are a country that happens to be free. to we are chosen to be the deliverers of freedom to the world. It is like this, you know, they are the leaders of the hierarchy.

Well, they are the leaders of the free world. Like that is like a very known sentence. Yes, it is. And even to say that, like, it's just it's so dangerous, right? But I also don't want to dismiss that. Big fan of democracy myself. Would like everyone to have it. I think I think the irony comes from a place and like my my tone there comes from a place of like

There's so many like European nations which have a much healthier democracy than the US. Even their voting system isn't that great, but anyway, that's another that's another thing to get into here. I might also add before we get into that though. I think what's fascinating when we're talking about this freedom conversation is that it's sort of based a political system.

off that mission. Like if you cr i if you then criticized the war, you weren't just criticizing a policy, you were seen as against freedom. And I think that's an interesting mind State as well. Yeah. And so when it comes to who gets to decide who's free enough, well, in practice, that's the decision then of the US executive branch, right? And That was really based on two quite conflicting factors, the first being security threats.

So if a country, you know, was suspected of having weapons of mass destruction, so like they believed it to be Iraq at the time, or harbored terrorists, Afghanistan, they were unfree and needed intervention. The second criteria would then be strategic alliance, and this is where hypocrisy comes up again and again. Countries like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan were arguably not free by Bush's definition, but because they were strategic allies in this war on terror,

the freedom agenda really was often just applied you know gently or not at all. Which okay, n we should now start looking into Iraq properly. So obviously under this worldview of freedom

Obviously, Saddam Hussein didn't qualify as acceptable. And to be clear, Saddam Hussein was an extraordinarily brutal dictator and Iraqis were not free under his rule. And yes, he had some loyalists and some people who said he was good to stand up to like Western imperialism.

uh the Israeli occupation on Palestine and foreign intervention in the region, but for the vast majority he was a tyrant whose twenty five year reign was marked by brutal authoritarianism and injustices, especially against the Shia and Kurdish communities. I want to talk a little bit about who Saddam Hussein was exactly. So he rose to power through the Ba'ath party and formally became president in nineteen seventy-nine.

From there, he consolidated control pretty quickly as the chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, the Prime Minister, and the Commander in Chief. He ruled through an extensive secret police network, violent repression of any descent, mass executions, an intense personality cult. But I also want to look at the other reasons Bush justified invading Iraq because it it really rested on three major claims. One, obviously that America was spreading freedom.

Two, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, specifically chemical and biological weapons that they were refusing to give up, and that Saddam Hussein and Iraq may have had links to Al Qaeda and the nine eleven attacks. It's also worth flagging here. I was actually chatting to my dad, and I mentioned that I was researching the Iraq war for big talk, and he reminded me that I really had to include that this was also not the first time the US had troops in Iraq.

Dad was actually in the army from about sixteen years old until his early twenties and he actually trained to go. Which is crazy. Um, he didn't though. But back in nineteen ninety one The US led the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, um, after Iraq's invasion. But even after that war officially ended, American forces remained involved throughout the 1990s by enforcing no-fly zones, maintaining sanctions, and providing safe havens.

So Iraq was already deeply entangled in US military power long before two thousand and three. I've only got you raised that'cause I think that there might be a lot of people listening who have parents or family members that were in the forces like my dad was in the navy, my grandfather was in the navy and went to Vietnam. Like There's

So much history in the way we talk about this based on like the affiliation and association we have with people, family members who served at some point too and their beliefs and, you know, what they have to believe about these things too in many ways. Yeah, absolutely. It was actually really interesting to talk to him about it. It was like literally the first thing I go, I'm covering the Iraq War and he goes, Well Iraq one or Iraq two? That's that's like so classic, right?

But also to explain the US reasonings a little further as well, we need to look at this whole fear around weapons of mass destruction and where they came from. In two thousand and two, the UN had previously given them the final opportunity inadvertent inadverted quotations. to admit to having any weapons of mass destruction. In response, Iraq submitted a twelve thousand page declaration claiming it had none.

United Nations inspectors said the document was incomplete and relied heavily on old information, although inspectors found that Iraq was increasingly cooperative in the process, allowing inspections surveillance flights and site access. But because their official declaration was so poorly done, the United Nations said it failed to adequately account for gaps in its past chemical, biological, and nuclear programs.

Which is largely what the United States cited as evidence that Iraq was hiding these weapons. To pivot for a second, can we also look at what public opinion was at the time? Because Not everyone was in agreement or supportive of the Iraq invasion. No, absolutely not. And in fact, in 2003, in February, an estimated 30 million people across more than 600 cities worldwide.

protested the impending invasion of Iraq. It was one of the largest coordinated protests in human history. Australians took to the streets in numbers never seen before or since. Unlike the Vietnam War protests, which built up over years and years, Iraq protests were like a massive and preemptive no, absolutely not. And the largest Australian march was in Sydney with around Two hundred and fifty.

Thousand people taking over the city streets. In an overwhelming display of anti-war sentiment, hundreds of thousands of people poured into Sydney's central business district for the largest anti-war protest in Australia's history. Mr. Bush! Mr. Howard! With what conscience will you sleep at night, knowing that you will have the blood on your hand of innocent women, children and soldiers whom are fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in this unjustified war?

Think to last year's Harbour Bridge protest for Palestine, which was like reported to be at similar numbers, which has is again quite unprecedented. The largest protest in the world was in Rome in Italy, where it's estimated three million protesters took part. That's insane. People were opposing the war for multiple reasons, and it wasn't just anti-war.

There were a mixture of arguments, legal, strategic, moral arguments, you know, again, it's it is that thing of coalition building in the face of like a common like, we disagree with this for differing reasons. On the legal side though, critics argue that invading a sovereign nation without a specific UN Security Council resolution was a violation of international law. They saw it as unilateralism that would break the rules of global order.

And when it came to this evidence around weapons of mass destruction, that was another sticking point for a lot of the public. Protesters famously carried signs saying, where are the WMDs? Oil was another reason. A massive portion of the movement believed the true motivation was securing Middle Eastern oil reserves. Sound familiar?

But in also saying this, despite the record-breaking protests, public opinion shifted dramatically the moment the first bombs dropped. This is known in political science as the rally around the flag effect. And in the US, patriotism and the media landscape and coverage was a key factor for this.

Once soldiers are on the ground, many people feel that opposing the war is the same as opposing the troops. I guess it's it is that thing of like prior to a war, it is looking at leaders as the people sending in, you know, troops to potentially die. And saying like you are in power and have the choice.

But there is I understand the psychology of then when troops are sent in wanting to support people they see as equals to them. Like that could be me. That's a like a that's an everyday person. I agree. But I also think when we're talking about this, like The mainstream me news and media at the time was so heavily focused on the military's technological might over anti-war arguments. Like they were up against the media, which is a propaganda machine and

I mean, so many people said like Hollywood is the ultimate propaganda machine as well. Yeah. But it's also worth noting that Bush did respond to these protests and this amount of pushback. And he did it with an ultimatum. So he declared that Saddam Hussein and his sons had 48 hours to leave Iraq or face military combat. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within forty eight hours.

Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing. For their own safety, all foreign nationals, including journalists and inspectors, should leave Iraq immediately. Unsurprisingly, Saddam Hussein does not comply. So in March 2003, US, UK, Australia coalition partners invaded Iraq. Forty thousand British troops, 150,000 US troops. But before we get into that, a quick side note, because this also blew my mind.

After the invasion had started, the US Department of Defense created most wanted playing cards to help soldiers to identify members of Saddam's regime. And of course they made Saddam Hussein and his image the ace of spade. That is some creative propaganda. Psychological warfare. We'll also put a photo of that on socials, because you kind of have to see it. But at first this invasion it looked like a little bit of a little bit of a little

Really successful. Within weeks, uh, the city was captured, posted of Saddam were ripped down, the statue of him was knocked over in the square. with assistance from very excited Iraqi civilians. And quickly Saddam went into hiding. So yes, of course Many Iraqi citizens did rejoice. For people who have lived under decades of fear and repression and brutality, this felt like a moment of relief.

I completely understand that relief because it, you know, we're not just talking about a strict government. We are talking about what's known as a totalitarian surveillance state. The immediate source of fear that was now removed was the secret police, with many feeling like Saddam turned Iraq into a nation of informants.

torture along with collective punishment was also a major threat. So if someone, you know, defected or spoke out, his parents, his sibling, his children could be arrested, tortured, executed. It was family punishment was really common under Saddam Hussein.

And he also well we s I mentioned this earlier, but he did have this like cult like personality that reinforced his power and his face was on every banknote, every school book, every street corner. So you can definitely understand that excitement. And I feel like especially when we're when people are linking this to Venezuela as well. It's like you don't want to undermine

or not give space to the conversation, which is, of course this was a relief. This was a s a glimmer of hope. And standing on the deck of the aircraft carrier of the USS Abraham Lincoln, first of may two thousand three, Bush declared painfully prematurely, that the mission had been accomplished, and a massive banner behind him read, Mission Accomplished. Tom Cruise movie vibes. And the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was very quick to dismiss any

of violence that was happening at the moment as just dead enders. Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And that is actually where we're gonna leave it for now because there's a lot to go. But that is that initial feeling of, you know, we've done, we've won, problem solved. So not problem solved. So not.