Marking 20 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq

WAMU 88.5 | By Chris Remington

Published March 20, 2023 at 8:56 AM EDT

Army 3rd Division 3-7 Infantry soldiers take cover after taking fire during a search and destroy mission near the town of An Najaf, Iraq.

It’s been20 years since the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

More than 4,400 U.S. service members and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed during the conflict. That’s according to the Department of Defense and Brown University’s Cost of War Project.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth was deployed to Iraq in 2004 as a member of the Illinois Army National Guard.

She was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot. And in November of that year, she lost both her legs and partial use of her right arm when her helicopter came under fire.

“It changed my life I couldn’t fly anymore. And I found this new mission which is to advocate for my fellow veterans,” Duckworth told 1A.

We speak with her and a panel of Iraqi journalists and authors about their experience covering the war. We also talk with a former Washington Post bureau chief in Baghdad who reported on the supposed weapons of mass destruction.