Great Britain · Warfare / Gulf War, second. Chronological records rendered directly from the World History Database.
According to Blair, the trigger was Iraq's failure to take a "final opportunity" to disarm itself of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that US and British officials called an immediate and intolerable threat to world peace
Start of the conflict known as the Iraq War or Operation Iraqi Freedom in which a combined force of troops from the United States, alongside the United Kingdom, and smaller contingents from Australia and Poland.
The reasons for the invasion were "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's alleged support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people".
This factsheet is generated from stored World History Database records matching the country, broad category, detailed category and exact Event value shown above. Duplicate display records are collapsed; database wording is otherwise preserved. Source provenance varies by record, so formal academic citation should be checked against the relevant primary source, archive or specialist historical reference.