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After the 911 attacks, the United States along with other nations launched military action in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban government was allowing the Al Qaeda terrorists to maintain a base of operations. The military commander of that operation was United States General Tommy Franks. According to Franks, early on during the Afghanistan operation, he was told by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on November 27, 2001 to look at military options for Iraq at the request of President Bush. Shortly after Christmas of 2001, General Franks went to Texas to meet President Bush. Franks fully briefed President Bush and some of the members of the Cabinet on plans for Desert Storm II, a potential invasion of Iraq, which he had been planning at Rumsfeld's request.
In his January 29, 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush began publicly commenting on Iraq, which he included as part of an "axis of evil" and "a grave and growing danger" to U.S. interests because of their possession of "weapons of mass destruction". In 2002, Central Intelligence Agency reports contained assertions that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was planning on recommencing nuclear weapons programs. It was also alleged that Saddam had not accounted for Iraqi biological weapons and chemical weapons material in violation of UN sanctions, and that some Iraqi missiles had a range greater than allowed by the UN sanctions. An October 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction was prepared. President Bush received a summary of this document and the US intelligence community investigated a possible tie between Sadaam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In late 2002 and early 2003, President Bush urged the United Nations to enforce Iraqi disarmament orders. On November 13, 2002, under UN Security Council Resolution 1441, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei led UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. There was controversy about Iraqi compliance with inspection requirements. UN inspection teams left Iraq despite at the US request after they were alerted to the possibility of US invasion, despite their requests for more time to complete their inspection. The U.S. sought a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of military force pursuant to the United Nations Charter. This was met with vigorous opposition from several nations including Russia and China. The U.S. withdrew its request for UN approval and began to prepare for an invasion of Iraq.
On March 18, 2003, President Bush told Congress that he had determined the following:
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone would neither adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor lead to enforcement of the UN Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq;
(2) acting outside of a UN sanctioned attack would be taking the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations who planned harm to the United States, much like the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
The war effort was joined by more than 30 other nations, the largest being the United Kingdom and Australia. The Bush Administration called this the "coalition of the willing".
The invasion of Iraq commenced on March 20, 2003. It's stated goal was to pre-empt Iraqi WMD deployment and remove Saddam Hussein from power. The Iraqi military was quickly defeated and Iraq's capital city of Baghdad, fell on April 9, 2003. On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq in a speech from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. This speech would become known as his "Mission Accomplished" speech due to a banner with that slogan in view overhead. In the speech, President Bush stated: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country. In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world."
The initial success of U.S. operations had increased President Bush's popularity. But the fighting was not over. U.S. and allied forces faced a growing insurgency led by sectarian groups inside of Iraq. The Bush Administration faced criticism in subsequent months following the report of the Iraq Survey Group, which did not find the large quantities of weapons that the regime was believed to possess. On December 14, 2005, while discussing the WMD issue, Bush acknowledged "It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong." Bush continued to assert that the war had been necessary and he said that he would have made the same decision if he had known more.
In the midst of this criticism, U.S. government officials revealed classified employment information about Valerie E. Wilson (also known as "Valerie Plame) that she was a covert operative of the United States CIA investigating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Mrs. Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, alleged that members of the Bush administration leaked his wife's covert identity to the press as political retribution for his criticism of the administration in a New York Times Op-Ed piece he wrote that was published on 6 July 2003. Wilson's allegations led to a federal grand jury investigation and subsequent conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges against the Vice-President's Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. Libby's trial began on January 16, 2007. Libby was convicted on March 6, 2007, on four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements, and he was acquitted of one count of making false statements.
Iraqi elections and a referendum to approve a constitution were held in January and December 2005. Voter turnout was estimated at less than 50%. In 2004 through 2006 the situation in Iraq deteriorated and the resulting instability let to increased criticism of Bush's policies. Demands were made within the United States to set a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq. Sectarian violence in Iraq at the end of 2006 increased negative impressions of Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq. More than 3,000 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq while the number of Iraqi deaths was estimated at 654,965, (in a range of 392,979 to 942,636.)
In 2006 a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the Iraq war had increased Islamic radicalism and increased the terror threat. The report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group led by Republican James Baker came out in late 2006. The report concluded that the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating". It recommended that the Bush administration take the following course of action:
(1) launch a diplomatic offensive with Iraq's neighbor states, particularly Iran, to help achieve stability, and
(2) redeploy U.S. forces to shift their focus from combat and security operations to that of supporting the Iraqi army, with the expectation that U.S. combat forces not necessary for force protection could be withdrawn from Iraq by March 2008.
President Bush admitted by the end of 2006 that there were strategic mistakes made in Iraq, but he maintained he would not change the overall Iraq strategy. Bush said that it was necessary to "stay the course" in Iraq. On November 28, 2006, facing mounting criticism for his Iraq war policy, Bush told the NATO Summit 2006 in Latvia "There's one thing I'm not going to do: I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."
On January 10, 2007 Bush addressed the U.S. about the situation in Iraq. In his speech, he announced new initiatives, including most notably the "surge" of 21,500 more troops for Iraq, as well reconstruction proposals costing 1.2 billion dollars. The "surge" was opposed by many influential politicians in Washington, including some Republicans, such as Senator Chuck Hagel and Senator Norm Coleman. On February 16, 2007, the House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop "surge" in Iraq by a vote of 246-182. In early march Bush requested an additional 8,000 troops be added to the surge.
On July 31, 2008, Bush announced that due to increased stability in Iraq, the additional American forces were being withdrawn. The consensus between the White House and the Pentagon was that the war had "turned a corner". According to the U.S. Defense Department, in December 2008 the "overall level of violence" in the country had dropped 80% since before the surge began in January 2007, and the country's murder rate had dropped to prewar levels.
George W. Bush left office on January 20, 2008 at the end of his second term. The winding down of U.S. involvement in Iraq accelerated under President Barack Obama. The U.S. formally withdrew all combat troops from Iraq by December 2011. Rightly or wrongly, many historians and those in the media continue to judge George Bush on a decision he made in 2002, based on knowledge subsequently acquired. In his 2010 memoir, Decision Points, Bush said he considered his biggest accomplishment to be keeping "the country safe amid a real danger".