Russia plans to mark the anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq by bringing it up at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy has announced.
“March 20 marks the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, carried out on the basis of a monstrous lie before the Security Council, in which Secretary of State Colin Powell shook a test tube in front of everyone claiming it to be a sample of a lethal weapon found in Iraq. No one has answered for the grave consequences of the invasion on Iraq and the entire Middle East. However, the notorious ‘rules-based order’, or rather lawlessness in the interests of the United States and its allies, has strengthened,” the diplomat wrote on Telegram channel.
"We've decided to help the Americans mark this mournful date (they themselves are unlikely to do so) and intend to raise this issue on March 20 during consultations of the Security Council. The meeting will be closed, but then, at about 19:00 Moscow time [12:00 pm EST, ed.] we will come out to the press and present our assessments," Polyanskiy wrote.
The US invasion of Iraq began with a massive aerial bombardment on March 19, and was followed March 20 by a ground invasion, wrapping up with President George W. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech on board an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003.
The US and its "coalition of the willing" allies spent the next eight years fighting an unrelenting insurgency, with the war costing the lives of over 4,700 US and allied servicemen, and hundreds of thousands or even millions of Iraqis. The Iraq War was one of the most expensive wars in US history, briefly strengthening, but ultimately undermining, Washington’s position as the preeminent military and economic power in the world after the end of the Cold War. The chaos resulting from the invasion ultimately gave rise to Daesh*, a radical Islamist terrorist group which spread terror and destruction across western Iraq and eastern Syria before being defeated by a broad and diverse coalition of nations and militias.
Russia helped lead the international opposition to the US invasion of Iraq from the outset, joining with US allies France and Germany to oppose the invasion and calling for a continuation of UN weapons inspectors' work to allay US concerns about Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction," which Bush administration officials later admitted were just a pretext for war. The illegal nature of the war in Iraq is something that has clearly remained on the mind of the former president, who admitted in a slip of the tongue gaffe last year that the attack on Iraq constituted "a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion."
* Aka IS/ISIS, a terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.