Saddam Hussein

March 20 – April 9, 2003 · 4,000 total casualties

The speed of Baghdad's fall seemed to validate Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's 'transformation' theory — that a smaller, faster military could defeat conventional armies cheaply. The iconic statue pull-down provided a powerful visual of liberation — though the watching crowd was small and the toppling partly staged. What the cameras didn't show was the looting of Baghdad's museums, hospitals, and ministries that began immediately, while US forces watched under orders not to intervene — Rumsfeld's dismissal: 'Stuff happens.'

April 1–3, 2003 · 600 total casualties

The Karbala Gap was the moment the Republican Guard chose to fight conventionally — and was destroyed by American firepower and night-fighting capability. The failure of Iraq's best conventional forces at Karbala accelerated the collapse in Baghdad. Intelligence analysts noted that despite Republican Guard bravado, their equipment was mostly destroyed before coalition ground forces even engaged them, a testament to the effectiveness of the air campaign. The non-use of chemical weapons in the gap — the location most expected — was later cited as evidence that the WMD program had been more degraded than even the CIA realized.