Combat· Iraq War (Op IRAQI FREEDOM)
Iraq War / OIF
The Iraq War was a long and costly conflict that drew the Marine Corps into nearly a decade of combat.
It began in 2003 with the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, the Marines driving up the eastern corridor from Kuwait through hard fights at Nasiriyah and across the rivers to Baghdad in a swift conventional campaign. The quick victory gave way to a grinding insurgency, and the Marines returned to take responsibility for the volatile Anbar Province in the west, where they fought the defining urban battles of the war at Fallujah, quelled the Shia uprising at Najaf, and waged a long campaign across the Euphrates valley and at Ramadi against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Their eventual partnership with the Sunni tribes in the Anbar Awakening helped turn the tide. The war tested the Corps in both conventional and counterinsurgency warfare and exacted a heavy price over its long course.
Engagements in this conflict (22)
Record no. 737