Look On! Turtles: Iraq war refugees

(Look On! takes occasional note of noteworthy productions)

I decided to watch Turtles Can Fly (2004), as part of my ongoing research into human rights and film, after it was recommended to me by a fellow intern at the International Criminal Court. She told me that it had invoked a strong reaction in her. I asked her if it was good, and she replied that she did not know what my criteria were to be able to answer my question.
When I review the films, I often do not have particular criteria in mind.

(credit)

I am not fixated by the 'legal realism' which dominated much of law and film scholarship beforehand; that is, I am not really interested in watching In the Name of the Father (1993), for instance, and pointing out all the procedural inaccuracies.
Nor am I purely looking at the formal aspects of cinematography. Being quite new to film studies, I often find myself captivated by the film and drifting off, instead of critically assessing the shots, editing, and mise en scène, all so de rigueur for film scholars.
But whatever the criteria, Turtles Can Fly, which focuses on the plight of children in refugee camps on the Iraqi/Turkish border, is an excellent film.
Turtles was directed by Bahman Ghobadi, who was himself born in Iranian Kurdistan. In a director's statement (p. 35 here), he wrote of the movie:

'Just as the world TV networks were announcing the end of the war, I began to make a film whose leading stars were neither Bush, nor Saddam, nor any other dictators. Those people had been the media stars the world over. Nobody mentioned the Iraqi people. There hadn't been a single shot of the Iraqis. They were mere extras...'

Shot on location, Turtles beautifully captures the consequences of war and poverty for children, who are often rendered extremely vulnerable. Many of the street children in the film have lost their limbs due to the Italian and US landmines. They receive money for picking them from the fields.
The film also tells the story of a girl, Agrin, and her brother, Hengov, who has lost his arms after stepping on a landmine. They have a small, blind child with them. It transpires that the toddler is the child of the girl. Through flashbacks, we see that the girl has been brutally raped by the men who killed their parents.
Through the course of the film I came to emotionally connect with the characters: Satellite, a boy in command of the children, the boy with no arms who can tell the future, the young boys collecting mines and hoping to be rescued by the American soldiers, the girl who has given birth to a baby that she does not want...
I have to thank my friend for this recommendation. An excellent and very moving film.

(Cross-posted at Human Rights Film Diary blog)

On July 8

On this day in ...
... 1982 (30 years ago today), in Dujail, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, gunmen ambushed a motorcade in which rode Iraq's President, Saddam Hussein (left, gesturing to the crowd in Dujail). (photo credit) The intended target of this assassination attempt retaliated, as this Washington Post article recounted:

'Within hours, army helicopters were conducting airstrikes on Dujail and soldiers were rounding up villagers. Hundreds were imprisoned, and many of them were tortured or executed.'

More than 150 people perished in the massacre.  After Hussein was deposed and arrested decades later, the Dujail atrocity became the basis of the crimes against humanity prosecution against Hussein, which resulted in conviction and, in December 2006, in a grisly execution.

(Prior July 8 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Answer to prosecution puzzler

The above Potential Prosecution Puzzler asks:

What about this photograph signals that Laurent Gbagbo, the just-deposed Ivoirian President, is deeply worried about finding himself soon at The Hague, awaiting prosecution before the International Criminal Court?

The answer may be found in the name of the man to the right, more visible in this enlarged detail.
Al Jazeera English did not identify him, but suspect that I'm not the only one who did.
As other media reported, the man at right is Jacques Vergès (prior IntLawGrrls posts). Born 86 years ago in what's now Thailand, Vergès, a French national, is the go-to guy for persons accused of international crimes. Think Khieu Samphan, before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Klaus Barbie in the French national courts. And he's offered his services to Slobodan Milosevic, who decided to self-represent before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and Saddam Hussein, whose family opted for other counsel in the trial before the Iraqi Special Criminal Court.
And so the Gbagbo defense prepares even before the Gbagbo prosecution begins.

On February 27

On this day in ...
... 1991 (20 years ago today), in a televised address, U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared Kuwait liberated, Iraq defeated, and U.S.-led allies on stand-down status. He called upon Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whose forces The New York Times described as "isolated and battered," to begin negotiating a permanent ceasefire. (map credit) The declaration marked the end of the Persian Gulf War -- but not, as readers of our "...and counting..." feature well know, the end of all combat in Iraq.

(Prior February 27 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On July 17

On this day in ...
... 2005 (5 years ago today), in Baghdad, Iraq, the special tribunal convened to prosecute persons accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide between July 17, 1968, and May 1, 2003, filed its 1st case against Saddam Hussein, who'd been deposed as President during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. (credit for Iraq flag circa 2006) Arrested in 2003, Saddam was charged in connection with the 1982 massacre of more than 150 persons in Dujail. He would be convicted in November 2006, and executed by hanging the following month.

(Prior July 17 posts are here, here, and here.)

Adjudicating Aggression in Domestic Courts

As we’ve blogged before, adding the crime of aggression to the ICC Statute threatens to undermine the Court’s system of complementarity, which depends on domestic courts being the primary fora for adjudicating international crimes. Very few states have penalized the crime of aggression, but they may begin to do so in the event that the crime of aggression is added to the ICC Statute. Delegates involved in these negotiations should start focusing on what amendments to the complementarity provisions or other provisions might be appropriate to signal that aggression prosecutions need not go forward in domestic courts in the event that the Court eventually exercises jurisdiction over the crime.
This issue was central to the British House of Lords case of R. v. Jones, [2006] UKHL 16—one of the few domestic cases to consider the crime of aggression. (Article 14 of the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal includes the domestic crime of an analogous crime—“The abuse of position and the pursuit of policies that were about to lead to the threat of war or the use of the armed forces of Iraq against an Arab country, in accordance with Article 1 of Law Number 7 of 1958.” Saddam Hussein was executed before these charges could be adjudicated).
The issue arose in Jones in a somewhat backward fashion. In 2003, several British subjects (including Margaret Jones, right) were arrested in connection with efforts undertaken at British military bases to impede British involvement in the Iraq War. The individuals were variously charged with, and some convicted of, aggravated trespass and criminal damage. The appellants all argued that under British law, they were entitled to use reasonable force to prevent the commission of a crime: the crime of aggression. Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 provides:

(1) A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large.

Appellants asserted that the United Kingdom’s actions in Iraq were unlawful and that they were thus justified in attempting to prevent them by the use of reasonable force. By their account, the crime of aggression was established in customary international law and its core elements understood with sufficient clarity to permit the prosecution of the crime. They argued that the defense should not be

restricted to crimes triable in the domestic courts and should be understood as extending to crimes recognised under customary international law.

Acknowledging the ongoing negotiations within the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression, the appellants stated that the absence of agreed provisions was primarily the result of disagreements over procedural matters, and did not negate the existence of a sufficiently defined prohibition of aggression in customary international law. Even though “the exercise of the prerogative in respect of foreign policy and deployment of the armed forces cannot be challenged in the courts,” the appellants argued that they should be entitled to rely on the illegality of the exercise of the Crown’s prerogative powers as a defense to criminal charges and to put to the jury the question of whether their actions were reasonable and proportionate in the face of an imminent crime.
In response, the Crown argued that there is no automatic incorporation of crimes of customary international law into the domestic law. Rather, such crimes require “statutory interposition.” In situations in which the state’s prerogative with regard to national security and foreign policy is at issue and is determinative, such matters remain outside the courts’ purview.
The Court of Appeals ruled, inter alia, that the crime of aggression was insufficiently defined under international law to trigger the application of the justification defense under the statute.
The House of Lords affirmed, but on different grounds. Lord Bingham of Cornhill determined that customary international law recognized the crime of aggression as evidenced by treaty practice since the 1920s, the Nuremberg and Tokyo proceedings, and the ICC negotiations. Lord Hoffman (left, of Pinochet fame) reasoned that it was for Parliament to decide which international offenses should be made prosecutable in domestic courts and that the courts no longer possessed any residual power to create new offenses in the event of statutory gaps, no matter how pressing the public interest. Furthermore, he noted that the liability of individuals for the crime of aggression is secondary to the acts of a state. The courts should not inquire into the “discretionary powers” of the state to use force. Lord Mance in his speech noted that not all public international law crimes must, or should, be incorporated into the domestic penal code.
The Appeals were dismissed. Several of the appellants were allowed at trial to argue that they were seeking to prevent specific and codified war crimes from being committed, principally the release of cluster bombs and munitions tipped with depleted uranium. Last I was able to determine, the trials ended with hung juries and the defendants were slated to be retried.
In their speeches, the Lords recognized that since the early days of the International Law Commission’s Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, individual responsibility for the crime of aggression has been intrinsically and inextricably linked to the commission of aggression by a state. Thus, prosecuting the crime of aggression in domestic courts would necessarily involve those courts in non-justiciable inquiries into foreign policy/national security decisions to use force by the home or foreign states. Indeed, as a predicate to finding an individual liable for the crime of aggression, courts would have to declare an act of state to be unlawful. Creating a unique or inverse complementarity regime for the crime of aggression would avoid this. To date, delegates have not focused on this implication of expanding the Court’s subject matter jurisdiction to the crime of aggression, but they would do well to do so.

(Disclosure: I've been advising the Department of State on the aggression negotiations. Any views expressed here are my own).

Unsettling profile of war crimes ambassador

War crimes envoy has personal touch read the headline for Colum Lynch's recent Washington Post profile of Stephen J. Rapp, who, as we've posted, became U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues in September.
Figured the story would talk about how Rapp's experiences as the top prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone had prepared him for this post. Fair enough.
But then came the subhead:
U.S. ambassador at large knows victimization and is a 'champion' of the brutalized
Uh-oh.
The story kicked off with a harrowing account of an all-night carjacking/kidnapping that Rapp endured 48 years ago. It then repeatedly linked this personal tragedy to Rapp's avowed self-image as "'a champion'" of the victims of crimes he's prosecuted, 1st in federal courts back home in Iowa, then at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and eventually at the Sierra Leone court.
Midway through, the story quoted criticism of the United States' policies on war crimes, levied by Fabienne Hara of the International Crisis Group, who contended

that the United States has not lived up to its commitment to stop violence as it unfolds. Its response to war crimes in three of the most serious conflict zones of the past two years, Congo, Sri Lanka and Gaza, consists of pressing for 'accountability after the crisis rather than stopping or preventing the crisis.'

Yet the reporter seems oblivious to another concern -- a concern apparent in the way that he chose to frame his story.

I've written here and here about what I call an "impartiality deficit" in international and internationalized criminal tribunals. Included within the term is concern that victims and victimization are overemphasized, to the exclusion of other interests at play in a properly balanced criminal justice system. Values of fairness and due process preclude establishment of a criminal court -- or prosecution office -- solely for the purpose of representing victims' interests. Both the court and the prosecutor have the duty to represent the larger society, to serve the interest of public safety even if that interest at times conflicts with those of victims -- as, for instance, proper adherence to defense rights often does.

That's not my own idiosyncratic view. Rather, it embodies tradition recalled in a 1935 U.S. Supreme Court opinion.

In Berger v. United States, Justice George Sutherland, a conservative Republican, wrote this in a unanimous opinion that reversed a conviction on account of misconduct by the federal prosecutor:

The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor-indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.

Prosecutors who assume a different mantle of responsibility, who construe their their role as the victims' lawyers, as the winners of the case, do so at a risk. 1st, identifying "victims" and "perpetrators" can be a difficult task, as is evident not only in yesterday's Los Angeles Times story about cycles of violence, but also in any consideration of how to deal with former child soldiers. 2d, feeding perceptions that international criminal justice seeks vengeance stokes already overheated claims of "victors' justice." 3d, as many pretrial proceedings at Guantánamo and the trial of Saddam Hussein demonstrated, singular equation of justice with victory does little to reduce the dangers of impartiality deficit.

It's to be hoped that the spin of the Post profile reflects reportorial choice rather than any such singular equation -- that punishment will be but 1 goal of the Office of War Crimes Issues, and that postconflict reconstruction and preconflict prevention will enjoy priorityof place.

On May 13

On this day in ...
... 1907, Daphne du Maurier was born in London, into an artistic and theatrical family whose household friends included the author of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie. Educated in Britain and France and a frequent traveler throughout Europe, Daphne began writing "at a very early age" and, thanks to an uncle's intervention, had a story published while still a teenager. Many of her literary works take place in Britain's southwesternmost province, Cornwall. Among them were the smuggling yarn Jamaica Inn (1936) and the eerily suspensful Rebecca (1938), both of which were made into films by Alfred Hitchcock. She died in 1989. In 1996 she was among 5 "20th Century Women of Achievement" to be honored with her own British commemorative stamp (above right); another honoree was Margot Fonteyn (prior post).
... 2003, workers in Iraq continued efforts to unearth the remains of thousands of victims of the brutal regime of deposed President Saddam Hussein. (credit for image of Iraqi flag, featuring Saddam's own handwriting, in effect 1991-2004) A New York Times reporter wrote upon visiting mass graves in salt marshes near a brick factory in Hilla, outside Baghdad:

Mr. Hussein's secret police turned this place into an execution field and mass grave for Shiites who rose up against his rule in February and March of 1991. That spring, there was killing all over Iraq. Kurds disappeared in the north, Shiites in the south.

(Prior May 13 posts are here and here.)

On February 5

On this day in ...

... 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell urged the Security Council to authorize military intervention in Iraq. In a statement that would prove unsuccessful, Powell claimed that intervention was necessary because the country, then led by Saddam Hussein, possessed chemical (left) and other weapons of mass destruction. (image credit) It's a claim that later Powell admitted "misled.") Most intriguing: Though Powell's statement can be found at nongovernmental sites like CNN.com and YouTube, a Google search suggests that all official records have been removed from the web. See, e.g., here.

... 2008, is Día de la Constitución in Mexico (coat of arms at right). The national holiday commemorates the 1917 proclamation of the Mexican Constitution. According to this website, it's "considered by many to be one of the most radical and comprehensive constitutions in modern political history."

Iraq on the couch

Iraq on the SOFA, is more like it.
SOFA, of course, is the acronym for Status of Forces Agreement, the generic term for a pact concluded between a country wishing to send its troops to a foreign land and a country that’s willing to receive foreign troops.
Governments in the United States and Iraq are about to implement a pact designed to define relations between the 2 countries for the next 3 years. Media have referred to the pact as a SOFA, and the text available here does include the expected provisions; for example, one setting forth which country has primary jurisdiction over which persons in the event a criminal case arises. (Private contractors are destined to lose immunity from Iraqi jurisdiction.) This pact is more than an ordinary SOFA, however, as its full name belies:
Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organizations of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq.
Indeed, it is Article 24, “Withdrawal of the United States Forces from Iraq,” that provokes perhaps the widest interest. Article 24 specifies that U.S. forces -- which invaded Iraq, leading a “coalition of the willing,” in March 2003 – “shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.” Withdrawal from parts of the country is to occur much sooner:

All United States combat forces shall withdraw from Iraqi cities, villages, and localities no later than the time at which Iraqi Security Forces assume full responsibility for security in an Iraqi province, provided that such withdrawal is completed no later than June 30, 2009.

On November 17, the 2 states’ executive officers subscribed to this speedy timetable, along with the rest of the pact. There is a proviso, however; each state’s government must secure domestic approval.
In the United States, criticism has been muted (though not entirely absent; Tom Hayden colorfully called the pact Frankenstein in Mesopotamia). The Administration of President George W. Bush managed to quell debate by resort to a “sole executive agreement” – a pact that the President concludes with another country and without having to secure the approval of Congress. (Our colleague Frederic L. Kirgis has posted a most helpful international-agreements primer here.) But that decision in itself drew criticism. Indeed, law professors Oona Hathaway (right) and Bruce Ackerman have argued here and here that the Constitution requires Congress’ input for this kind of pact – either the OK of both Houses or the advice and consent of 2/3 of the Senate. Hathaway reiterated her objections at the Northern California International Law Scholars’ roundtable earlier this month. Pointing in particular to the pact's abrogation of contractor immunity, she maintained that if U.S. officials had negotiated the pact with the knowledge that they would have to “sell it to Congress,” the result would have been better. In her view, the lack of any need to get an OK at home “made them weaker, not stronger.”
In Iraq, debate was both more widespread and more heated. Last month “tens of thousands” of Iraqi protesters marched to the Baghdad square where, years earlier, another crowd famously toppled statue of Saddam Hussein. There, “to denounce” the pact, they “dragged down … an effigy of President Bush.” “A fistfight broke out in Iraq's parliament,” NPR reported. Soon, however, Iraq legislators approved the pact, by a vote of 149 to 35, with 14 members abstaining and another 77 absent for the vote. Iraq completed its internal adoption process on December 4, when the 3-member Presidential Council approved the pact.

Along with a similar resolution pertaining to British and other non-U.S. troops, the pact thus takes effect tomorrow, New Year’s Day.

The U.N. mandate authorizing foreign troop presence expires, like this year, at midnight.

(With thanks to California-Davis law student Veronica Capron, whose research interest in this pact piqued my own)

On December 14

On this day in ...

... 2003 (5 years ago today) , U.S. troops located deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in a hole and arrested him. He would be tried, convicted, and, in 2006, executed by a special Iraqi tribunal.

... 1960, at the Salon de l'Horloge at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, 20 countries (18 in Europe plus the United States and Canada) signed the convention establishing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (left). In the words of the organization, now numbering 30 members:

OECD brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world to:
► Support sustainable economic growth
► Boost employment
► Raise living standards
► Maintain financial stability
► Assist other countries' economic development
► Contribute to growth in world trade

On April 30

On this day in ...
... 2003 (5 years ago today), about 6 weeks after a U.S.-led coalition had invaded Iraq and put its President, Saddam Hussein, to flight, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer declared: ''It is the fact that major combat operations have ended.'' The same day, the New York Times published a "lessons learned" analysis of the operations that were said to have come to an end. In fact, combat continued; as we've tracked, servicemember casualties now exceed 4,365 (with U.S. troop deaths in April at a 7-month high), while a low estimate places Iraqi civilian casualties at 83,221 children, women, and men.
... 1952, The Diary of a Young Girl by the late Anne Frank (right), who lived in hiding in Amsterdam before Nazis transported her and her family to concentration camps, was made available in English. First published in Dutch as Het Achterhuis in 1947, the memoir since has been issued in 50 different languages. (photo credit)

5 years ... and counting ...

(Occasional sobering thoughts.) As we noted this time last year, today marks the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Five years ago today, a U.S.-led coalition entered the country, without authorization of the U.N. Security Council, and began a military operation that soon deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Eventually the operation won the Security Council's post hoc OK, and eventually Hussein was executed, following his conviction by a U.S.-supported special Iraqi tribunal.
What failed to follow were other primary objectives -- not only the building of a new and democratic (or at least, less autocratic) nation-state, but also, the establishment of security for all in Iraq, civilians and servicemembers alike. Debate continues on whether continued U.S. presence is necessary to combat al Qaeda; that is, whether troops will enhance or undermine any progress toward security. Many politicians in the United States tend toward the former choice, although they differ on the size of that continued presence. In an International Herald Tribune op-ed entitled "Iraq will not be a Qaedistan," French political scientist Olivier Roy has offered a useful contrary view.
Meanwhile, despite some spikes in casualty rates, it seems that among the U.S. populace, nobody knows, or takes time to find out, the human toll the Iraq conflict is taking. Those who do know, and care, wait still for a comprehensive, workable plan for withdrawal.
With that, here's the count this past month:
According to Iraq Body Count, between 82,240 and 89,751 Iraqi women, children, and men had died in the conflict -- an increase of between 814 and 865 deaths in the last 4 weeks. Regarding servicemembers: by the U.S. Defense Department's figures, as of Sunday 3,990 American servicemembers had been killed in Iraq. Total coalition fatalities: 4,298 persons. (That's 24 servicemember deaths in 4 weeks, all but 1 of them Americans.) The Department stated that 29,320 servicemembers have been wounded, and that 8,904 of them required medical air transport. Military casualties in the conflict in Afghanistan stand at 487 Americans and 293 other coalition servicemembers, an increase of 4 and 10, respectively, in the last 4 weeks.

On November 8, ...

... 1897 (110 years ago today), Dorothy Day (left) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She and her family lived through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, then moved to Chicago. At age 19, after having studied 2 years at the University of Illinois, Day moved to New York, where she began writing for socialist newspapers. Active in antiwar and other "hot-button issues of the day," "women's rights, free love, and birth control," in her early years Day terminated a pregnancy by abortion, married and divorced, and gave birth to a child outside of marriage. She had the child baptized Catholic, an indicator of her movement toward working for social change within that religion. In 1933 Day cofounded a social movement and newspaper, both known as Catholic Worker. To this day Workers, sworn to poverty, work with and among America's poorest inner-city neighborhoods.
... 2002 (5 years ago today), U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 won unanimous approval. Invoking coercive powers granted it by Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, the Council declared Iraq, and thereby its President, Saddam Hussein, in "material breach" of prior weapons inspections mandates, and gave Iraq a "final opportunity" to submit to intensified weapons inspections.

On November 5, ...

... 1857 (100 years ago today), Ida Tarbell was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania. She grew up amid that state's oil fields; indeed, her father was a small businessman dependent on the oil industry. The only woman in the Allegheny College class from which she graduated, Tarbell (right) began working as a science teacher, but eventually turned to writing. She did graduate work and wrote news articles in Paris. On returning home just after the turn of the century Tarbell -- recalling reversals in the oil industry that her father and others had suffered -- began work on a series of magazine articles published in 1904 as The History of the Standard Oil Company. Part of a new kind of investigative journalism known by the term "muckraking," it has been called the most important book ever on business.
... 2006, an Iraqi special tribunal convicted deposed leader Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity stemming from a 1982 massacre in the city of Dujail, and sentenced him to death by hanging. The verdict ended a proceeding about which I'd written with concern here.

On September 24, ...

... 1992 (15 years ago today), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, ruling on a petition brought 3 years earlier, confirmed petitioners' allegation that on "February 22, 1983, approximately 74 people were assassinated by members of the Salvadoran security forces near Las Hojas, Sonsonate, El Salvador." It concluded that the government of El Salvador (flag at right) was responsible for the massacre, in violation of several articles of the American Convention on Human Rights. The Commission directed the state to investigate and bring to justice those responsible, and to put in place measures for prevention of such atrocities.
... 1980, under orders from President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi armed forces bombed sites in Iran and set an oil export terminal in Iran on fire, the latest escalation of border skirmishes between the 2 countries. The Iran-Iraq War would not end for another 8 years; by that time, more than 400,000 had been killed and 750,000 wounded.

On April 9, ...

... 1939, contralto Marian Anderson, who already had sung before kings in Sweden and Denmark, performed at Washington's Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her sing in Constitution Hall because she was African American.
... 2003, U.S. tanks entered Baghdad, and U.S. troops aided the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader was by then a fugitive.

On March 19, ...

... 2003 (U.S. time), a U.S.-led coalition began Operation Iraqi Freedom, setting off a conflict that to this day has resulted in ouster of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, hanged in 2006, and tens of thousands of Iraqi, American, and other coalition servicemember casualties.
... 1920, the U.S. Senate failed to muster the 2/3 majority necessary to approve the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and authorized the League of Nations, an international organization aimed at peaceful settlement of interstate disputes.