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Five years have passed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and yet no closure for the United States or the Iraqis seems visible in the near future.
Five years ago, President George W. Bush ordered military action against Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein, Iraq's president at the time, from expanding an alleged nuclear, chemical and biological weapons program.
As of now, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died.
Hans Blix, former U.N. weapons inspector tasked with investigating Iraq's unconventional weapons program, found that Iraq did not have unconventional weapons capabilities or programs to develop any.
He also told the British Independent newspaper on March 4, 2004, that the war in Iraq was illegal, and that there was no proof that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.
In April, former CIA Director George Tenet published his book "At the Center of the Storm," in which he said the Bush administration was looking for any evidence, regardless of its plausibility, that would justify invading Iraq.
Today, Iraqis still die in bulk daily because of sectarian violence, al-Qaida's suicide bombings aimed at Shiite Muslims and U.S. soldiers, and coalition forces' military operations.
In 2006, the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, in coordination with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a study estimating that about 400,000 more Iraqis have died since the U.S. invasion compared to deaths in the last three years under Hussein's rule.
The study attributed 50 percent of the deaths through May 2005 to coalition forces.
After that, Iraqi deaths caused by coalition forces dropped to 28 percent.
Sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims claimed a more substantial proportion of the deaths.
U.S. Armed Forces invaded Iraq and toppled Hussein's brutal regime within three weeks of the March 20 invasion.
In 2003, Bush used U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 as the legal cover for military action against Iraq.
Resolution 1441 called upon Iraq to disarm its arsenal of medium range missiles.
Bush claimed at the time that Iraq had not adhered to the international community's rules and, therefore, military action was necessary to protect the American people.
On the other hand, several members of the U.N. Security Council argued that Israel has been in defiance of several resolutions for more than 30 years.
Some members of the United Nations wondered why invading Iraq would be justified considering other examples of defiance.
In his 2003 State of the Union, Bush said Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of terrorists who might want to do harm to America.
Consequently, Bush said it was his obligation to protect the American people from such imminent danger.
It was not difficult for Bush to build a consensus to support his actions because the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were still alive in the memory of Americans.
Last year, a troop surge was approved by Congress, and sectarian and suicide bombings decreased about 60 percent.
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