Iraq: Images of a war and its toll

The eight-year U.S. military operation in Iraq, now winding down with the withdrawal of the last U.S. forces, produced these enduring images.

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March 21, 2003

An explosion rocks Baghdad on March 21, 2003, the result of airstrikes in the opening days of the Iraq war. The United States and its allies began the invasion phase of the war on March 19, 2003, citing concerns about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

April 14, 2003

A Marine tells an Iraqi detained on suspicion of looting to be quiet and keep his head down. About six looters were arrested after robbing a bank in Baghdad. Local residents cheered Marines who captured the looters.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

April 18, 2003

Iraqis push the head of a statue of Saddam Hussein after the statue was toppled on April 18, 2003, in Baghdad. The toppling of a statue of Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square was one of the war's most enduring images.

Oleg Nikishin / Getty Images

March 25, 2003

Marines traveling in a convoy to the Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr toss candy and food to Iraqi children.

Lucian Perkins / The Washington Post

April 16, 2003

A Marine pulls down a picture of Saddam Hussein at a school in Kut, southeast of Baghdad. A team of Marines, Army troops and Special Forces fighters went to schools and other facilities in Kut looking for weapons caches and unexploded bombs in preparation for removing and neutralizing them.

Chris Hondros / Getty Images

April 7, 2003

Staff Sgt. Chad Touchett, center, relaxes with comrades from A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment after a search through one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces, damaged after a bombing, in Baghdad.

John Moore / Associated Press

March 31, 2003

An Iraqi prisoner of war comforts his 4-year-old son at a regrouping center for POWs captured by the Army's 101st Airborne Division near Najaf, Iraq. Nearly 4,500 Americans were killed in the eight-year war, and, by some estimates, more than 100,000 Iraqis died.

Jean-Marc Bouju / Associated Press

March 29, 2003

An Iraqi girl holds her sister as she waits for her mother to arrive with food bought in Basra during the opening days of the U.S.-led invasion.

Jerry Lampen / Reuters

May 14, 2003

A woman shouts the name of her missing son as Marines search for evidence at a mass grave in Hillah. At least 2,000 bodies were found at the site, one of the largest mass graves discovered in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

May 1, 2003

President George W. Bush addresses the nation from the flight deck of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in California. In the speech, widely derided after sectarian war broke out in Iraq, Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq.

Stephen Jaffe / Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

July 25, 2003

Bodies described as being those of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday (in background) and Qusay (forefront), are displayed in the Air Force morgue in Baghdad after Uday and Qusay were killed in a gun battle on July 22, 2003, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Stan Honda / Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

Oct. 17, 2003

Pfc. Tom Dinomenico of the the 549th Military Police Company, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., lets an Iraqi child hit him with a squirt gun blast while on patrol with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Sadr City. Soldiers in Sadr City met responses ranging from friendliness to stone-throwing.

Lucian Perkins / The Washington Post

Oct. 30, 2003

An Iraqi detainee with his head encased in a plastic bag sits in the garden of a house searched by U.S. soldiers during a night raid in Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein.

Damir Sagoljj / Reuters

May 6, 2004

Pfc. Lynndie R. England holds a naked detainee with a leash at the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad in one of the most famous images of the war, released in May of 2004. The soldier at left is unidentified. The reports of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib generated a worldwide controversy and led to criminal charges against U.S. soldiers. England was found guilty of six counts of abuse and indecent acts in a court martial at Fort Hood, Tex. Eleven U.S. soldiers were convicted in connection with abuse and torture at the prison. England served 521 days in prison and was given a dishonorable discharge.

The Washington Post / The Washington Post

Dec. 15, 2003

U.S. soldiers pull up the Styrofoam cover of the "spider hole" where Saddam Hussein was hiding when he was captured on Dec. 13, 2003, in Dawr. Hussein was hanged Dec. 30, 2006, after an Iraqi special tribunal convicted him of crimes against humanity.

Chris Hondros / Getty Images

Dec. 14, 2003

An image captured from video footage shows former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein undergoing a medical examination after he was captured.

Associated Press / Associated Press

March 22, 2004

British troops are covered in flames from a gasoline bomb thrown during a violent protest in the southern city of Basra by job seekers who said they had been promised work with the security services.

Atef Hassan / Reuters

Sept. 17, 2004

A young girl is treated for wounds sustained during U.S. airstrikes in Fallujah. Battles for control of the Iraqi city in 2004 were among the hardest-fought and most polarizing of the war as Marines fought to oust Iraqi insurgents.

Bilal Hussein / Associated Press

Nov. 14, 2003

Donna Gilmore, widow of Sgt. Maj. Cornell W. Gilmore, gazes upward as her son Cornell Gilmore covers his face during her husband's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Gilmore and five other soldiers were killed on Nov. 7, 2003, when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter carrying them was shot down in Tikrit.

Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post

Feb. 23, 2004

Iraqi police offficers guard a burning pipeline near the city of Karbala after an attack by insurgents.

Faleh Kheiber / Reuters

June 21, 2004

Spec. Hugo Gonzalez prays while being treated in an Army emergency ward in Baquba, Iraq, after suffering shrapnel wounds from a roadside bomb while traveling in an unarmored Humvee. Such bombs were a major cause of U.S. casualties.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

March 31, 2004

Iraqis chant anti-American slogans as the charred, mutilated bodies of private U.S. military contractors hang from a bridge over the Euphrates River in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. The killings were a catalyst for a U.S. siege of the city.

Khalid Mohammed / Associated Press

April 15, 2004

Marines fighting for the Iraqi city of Fallujah set off a controlled detonation of a home where anti-tank mines, rifles and other weapons were found.

Michael Robinson-Chavez / The Washington Post

June 22, 2004

A soldier wounded by a shrapnel from a roadside bomb while on a routine patrol in the village of Waidr, about 45 miles east of Baghdad, is treated by media Luis Casas, 22, of Houston.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

April 12, 2004

Marines of the 5th Regiment scale a gate in Fallujah during the first battle for control of the city in 2004. Marines found some weapons and occasionaly came under sniper fire and mortar attacks from insurgents.

Michael Robinson-Chavez / The Washington Post

June 14, 2004

Detainees celebrate their release from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

Sept. 22, 2004

A boy cries at the bedside of his brother after a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside a photocopy shop in the Al-Jamiyah neighborhood of Baghdad. Iraqi National Guard applicants were readying their papers before heading to a nearby recruiting center. At least six died and 54 were wounded in the blast.

Khalid Mohammed / Associated Press

Sept. 12, 2004

Raad Muchawet, center, in blue, mourns the death of his brother, Saad Muchawet and his three children, Haider, Ali and Karar, in the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City. Residents alleged that they were shot by U.S. soldiers.

Karim Kadim / Associated Press

Sept. 25, 2004

Iraqi boys wounded in U.S. airstrikes on Fallujah wait inside an ambulance to be transferred to another hospital.

Fares Dlimi / Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

June 19, 2004

Um Hussein, draped in a mourning veil, joins 500 women in downtown Sadr City in a demonstration against the violence plaguing their neighborhood.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

June 18, 2004

Miriam Zyad, 7, plays on a cement barricade outside her apartment. Children living near foreign or occupation compounds, often targeted with car bombs, became accustomed to their streets and play areas being cut off by cement barricades and razor wire.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

Nov. 9, 2004

Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division take part in heavy fighting in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. U.S and Iraqi forces fought to regain control of the city before nationwide elections in January 2005.

Scott Nelson / Getty Images

Feb. 1, 2007

A view through night-vision goggles shows Marines in the city of Ramadi taking a break in the kitchen of a home after a search for insurgents. Ramadi is in Anbar province, where the "Sunni Awakening" led to Iraqis joining efforts to quell insurgent forces, including al-Qaeda in Iraq.

John Moore / Getty Images

Jan. 28, 2007

An Iraqi student walks past a pool of blood at the entrance of her school after a mortar attack in Baghdad's Adel neighborhood. One girl was killed. That day, at least 24 Iraqis were killed in ambushes, car bombs and firefights as Shiite Muslims headed to the shrine city of Karbala for Ashura, one of their most sacred ceremonies.

Wisam Sami / Agence France-Presse via Getty images

Jan. 18, 2005

Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed by soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division. They opened fire on the Hassans' car when it unwittingly approached them during a dusk patrol in the tense northern Iraqi town of Tall Afar. Parents Hussein and Camila Hassan were killed instantly, and a son, Racan, 11, was seriously wounded. Racan, paralyzed from the waist down, was later treated in the United States.

Chris Hondros / Getty Images

Nov. 9, 2004

Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, 20, of Kentucky smokes a cigarette during the second battle for control of Fallujah in November 2004.

Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times / Associated Press

Aug. 8, 2011

Pfc. David Hedge of Bealeton, Va., front, and fellow soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, are bathed in helicopter rotor wash moments after being flown in for an operation to disrupt weapons smuggling in Istaqlal, north of Baghdad.

Maya Alleruzzo / Associated Press

Nov. 14, 2004

A wounded Jordanian fighting with Iraqi insurgents is treated by Army medics during fighting in Fallujah. The city was an epicenter of the Iraqi insurgency.

Scott Nelson / Getty Images

Dec. 17, 2004

Gunnery Sgt. Ryan P. Shane, center, of the 8th Marine Regiment and another Marine pull a wounded comrade to safety during fighting in Fallujah. The wounded Marine later died.

Marine Corps photo / Reuters

May 27, 2007

Mary McHugh mourns at the grave of her fiance, Sgt. James Regan, at Arlington National Cemetery. Regan, a Special Forces soldier, was killed by a roadside bomb in February 2007. It was McHugh's first visit to Arlington's Section 60, where hundreds of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.

John Moore / Getty Images

Feb. 18, 2008

Iraqi soldiers return to their outpost after an operation in western Mosul.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

May 23, 2008

U.S. soldiers at Camp Bucca, a holding facility for detainees in Umm Qasr.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

May 23, 2008

A detainee hugs his children during their visit to Camp Bucca in Umm Casr.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

Dec. 14, 2008

A series of images made from video show Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, throwing a shoe at President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad with Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki right. The man threw two shoes at Bush before he was taken into custody. Neither Bush nor Maliki was hit. In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt.

/ Associated Press

Flag-draped coffins of U.S .war dead are seen aboard a cargo plane in Dover, Del. The Air Force mortuary there has come under criticism for its handling of the remains of war dead.

Defense Department photo / Associated Press

March 16, 2009

Detainees pray at Camp Bucca, a U.S. facility that as of June 2011 was being turned into an industrial hub.

Dusan Vranic / Associated Press

Feb. 26, 2009

A U.S. soldier dances in a bar on Abu Nawas Street in Baghdad.

Andrea Bruce Woodall / The Washington Post

Nov. 30, 2010

Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., sit in the belly of a C-17 aircraft at Sather Air Base in Baghdad as they begin their journey home after a year in Iraq.

Maya Alleruzzo / Associated Press

Aug. 29, 2009

Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division are welcomed home to Fort Carson, Colo., after a year in Iraq .

John Moore / Getty Images

July 15, 2011

Steven Hart kisses his 6-month-old daughter, Madison, who was born while he was away, during the homecoming of the USS Enterprise at the Norfolk Naval Station after a 184-day deployment to support forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Win McNamee / Getty Images

2006

Marines place a flag over the casket of 2nd Lt. James Cathey at the Reno airport as passengers watched the family gather on the tarmac.

Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News / Associated Press

2006

The night before the funeral of her husband, 2nd Lt. James Cathey, Katherine Cathey slept near his casket. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of "Cat," and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. "I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it," she said. "I think that's what he would have wanted."

Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News / Associated Press

2006

Minutes after her husband's casket arrived at the Reno airport, Katherine Cathey leans against the coffin of her husband, 2nd Lt. James Cathey.

Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News / Associated Press

Marine Maj. Steve Beck prepares for the final inspection of 2nd Lt. James J. Cathey's body, days after notifying Cathey's wife of the Marine's death in Iraq.

Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News / Associated Press

Sept. 27, 2011

Sgt. Justin Hathaway of the United States Forces-Iraq Provost Marshal Office braves a sandstorm at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq as the United States neared completion of troop withdrawals from Iraq after eight years.

Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo/Defense Department / Associated Press

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