Operation Iraqi Freedom - The Invasion Begins - Animated

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President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, leave the country in 48 hours or face an invasion. Before the ultimatum expires, British, American and Australian Special Forces move in to Iraq.

[peanutlover]

Imagine being able to simply sleep through the beginning of an invasion. We should all be more like Trombley.

[AudiMan]

it's hard to believe this is already considered a "historic event" and being documented as such...20 years ago seems like yesterday...Always love these videos!

[Marshal_Dunnik]

19:56 And also 20, 332 bags of tea, without which the British Army cannot fight effectively

[Gunbudder]

For anyone who doesn't already know, Rolling Stone embedded a reporter with Marine First Recon (which is why we know what Colbert said to Trombley). You can read the reporter's (Evan Wright) book called Generation Kill if you want a first hand account of the very beginning of the ground invasion. Its an amazing book and gets into a lot of stories that are kind of insane. It really shows how utterly incompetent some of the leadership was, and how some leadership had such a massive boner to try out their pet theories on tactics that they were willing to risk lives. The HBO miniseries Generation Kill is also amazing, but it cuts out quite a bit from the book and combines some characters into one person. The character Rudy is playing himself though which is really interesting.

[Links]

Had heard of the mission, but had no idea the CIA was 99.9% confident. Certainly brings a new meaning to it.

[scotchbingeington]

8:25 "Remember, switching to your sidearm is faster than rebarreling your rifle"

[simonbas]

My favorite fact about Iraqi freedom was that it was originally called Operation Iraqi Liberation. Til someone pointed out the acronym for that would be OIL which is a little too on the nose

[kidbest]

And so begins another documentary-quality series. Well done!

[rickjames]

Hard to believe 20 years have passed since the invasion. I was with the 82nd 1-505 PIR running ops out of a FOB in Fallujah in Aug 2003. Now I sit here near my 40s with fewer memories. It is also interesting to learn how the invasion started. We all knew of the little piece we were tasked with but never really knew how it all came together.

[SmokeyNades]

Are the Iceman and Ray gonna sing us into the invasion?

[JerBuster]

I was onboard the USS MITSCHER(DDG57) over there when OIF began. Seeing and hearing a tomahawk cruise missile launching in pitch dark from the ship is something that I will never forget.

[pekkakoski]

Operations Room never lets us down. Thanks.

[manuelacosta]

This Gulf Wars series is very interesting and here we go with the second phase. Nice of you to start with SAS.

[HalcyonAD]

Nice breakdown. Looking forward to the rest of the series as it is filling holes in my research for OIF. I was on the Theodore Roosevelt in the Med for this one. One thing, for the invasion, only one squadron of Super Hornets (VFA-115) was involved in OIF and they were flown by the US Navy. The Aussies used older A model Hornets.

[HealthySkepticism]

I highly recommend the mini series based on First Recon's actions during the initial invasion. Generation Kill

[PilotGrapefruit]

Can’t wait for this series! I’m a huge nerd with Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and this channel hits the spot 😁

[Michael-wnrh]

TheOperatipnsRoom, I can't tell you how much joy and knowledge I've gleaned from your videos these past several years. I've had a pretty rough 2023...issues at home, laid off from my job of 8 years, etc. As soon as I'm back on my feet, I plan on joining the patreon. You guys richly deserve it. Thank you for all the work.

[OwnedGolem]

Man, I miss the 90's/2000's carrier air wings. Like I obviously understand that they want to consolidate to help maintenance, but damn all those types of planes were so cool. F-18s, f-14s, a-6s, a-7s. It's just not as cool now with only super hornets, though with f35s now we're starting to see this again a bit

[Admiral_Jezza]

"Destroy the water treatment plant, which is a suspected chemical weapons facility"
LMAO

[hirumaryuei]

So I wanted to talk about the SIlkworm that hit Camp Commando, since "it was not detected" is a bit inaccurate.

I was located a bit forward of Camp Commando at the time near the Iraq-Kuwait border. I was in the same camp as the Patriot battery that shot down the subsequent missiles. At the time the choppers had just flown overhead that evening and the whole camp was transitioning from "business as usual" to "this is actually happening" mindset. Then suddenly this fucking sonic boom rips out, probably less than 1000 feet off the ground, heading from north to south. I'm like "was that a jet?" and my co-worker is like "yo I think that was a missile." Maybe 5 seconds later the air raid sirens go off and we run to the missile bunkers we built over the last few weeks. The next day we hear Commando was hit in the berm right outside the comm tent. We drove by it later and there's a huge impact crater like, probably 10 yards max from 9th Comm's ops tent on the outside of the camp.


I spoke with some of the junior soldiers running the Patriot battery and there was apparently a pretty big dressing down over the whole thing. It never happened again.