ABSTRACT
The American invasion and conquest of Iraq in 2003 was the second major military action by the United States that arose from the dynamics of the post-9/11 experience. Like the war in Afghanistan, it was largely justified as a response to the international terrorism associated with Al Qaeda, although the connections between the Saddam Hussein regime (whose overthrow was the major purpose of the war) and Al Qaeda have proven to be tenuous or nonexistent. In planning for the war, the presumption of American military hegemony influenced willing decision makers to believe the war would be a quick, decisive, even easy, mission, a calculation that proved to be tragically wrong.
