In an undertaking named Operation Iraqi Freedom, the United States invades Iraq. Its stated purposes are to disarm Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), end Saddam Hussein’s regime and free the Iraqi people from a disreputable totalitarian.²⁰ Roughly five years after the initial invasion, the Center for Public Integrity reports that senior Bush administration officials made “935 false statements” in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001, about the extent of the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In retrospect, the center found, the Iraqi regime never possessed WMD, and until 2003 did not have any viable ties to al-Qaida.²¹