Timeline of events: 20 years since U.S.-led invasion of Iraq

By JOHN DANISZEWSKI
Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) — It’s been 20 years since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began March 20, 2003. President George W. Bush framed it as a mission to free the Iraqi people, end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and root out weapons of mass destruction. Two years later, the CIA’s chief weapons inspector reported that no stockpiles of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons were ever found. The U.S.-led war deposed a dictator whose imprisonment, torture and execution of dissenters had kept 20 million people living in fear for nearly a quarter of a century. But it also broke what had been a unified state at the heart of the Arab world, opening a power vacuum.