Impact on Cultural Sites

Invasion dates and opening

20 March - 1 May 2003; began with an airstrike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad

Scale of the invasion

Over 450,000 US personnel (CENTCOM report) with only 6 other countries providing troops

Operation Ugly Baby

Northern operation with a 50-strong special ops detachment

Hadithah Dam attack

A car bomb by two female attackers killed 3 Rangers

Operation Viking Hammer

The 3rd Battalion seized suspected biological weapons at Halabjah

Thunder Runs

Wallace's plan for 30 days of armoured assaults on Baghdad

Baghdad National Museum looting

10 April 2003 - the museum was ransacked, with 15,000 objects disappearing in two days

Rumsfeld on the looting

Defense Secretary responded "freedom is untidy"

Why looting continued

The inexplicable choice not to establish curfews or martial law after the fall of the regime

Shinseki vs Wolfowitz on troop numbers

General Shinseki made the case in Congress for hundreds of thousands of soldiers; Wolfowitz deemed this "wildly off the mark" - the 100,000 used for the invasion was insufficient