September 16, 2002: Quoted in the Wall Street Journal, White House Economic Adviser Lawrence Lindsay estimates the cost of war on Iraq at between $100 million to $200 million. Lindsay is ousted three months later. In December, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, tells The New York Times that “the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion.” Congressional Democrats estimate the cost at $93 billion, not including post-war peacekeeping and reconstruction.
October 10-11, 2002: The U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 10, and the U.S. Senate on Oct. 11, pass the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution, better known as the Iraq War Resolution.
January 28, 2003: In his State of the Union message, Bush says that the “British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” He presses the case for war on Iraq.
February 6, 2003: Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking to the United Nations Security Council, shows satellite photographs, projected on two big screens, of what he said were chemical and biological facilities, and claims Hussein is making nuclear weapons and developing missiles deliver them. “Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world,” Powell says.
March 7, 2003: Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, tells the Security Council that his searches have found “no evidence” of production facilities of biological agents in Iraq. The same day, the International Atomic Agency’s Mohamed el Baradei, tells the council that “After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.” He reasserts the find that the Niger uranium documents were a forgery.
March 8, 2003: In a national radio address, Bush says: “He possesses weapons of terror. He provides funding and training and safe haven to terrorists who would willingly deliver weapons of mass destruction against America and other peace-loving countries. The attacks of September the 11, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terror states could do with weapons of mass destruction.”
March 8, 2003: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awards KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton (the oil giant once headed by Dick Cheney), a no-bid monopoly contract to restore and operate Iraq’s oil infrastructure. The $2.4 billion contract has a total potential value of $7 billion, according to a House Committee on Government Reform report.
March 17, 2003: As the United Nations Security Council refuses to pass a resolution, sought by Bush, authorizing war on Iraq, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair end their attempt to convince the United Nations to do so. That evening, Bush gives Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war.
March 19, 2003: The U.S.-led war on Iraq begins.
