Iraq: War at Any Cost

March 20th, 2003: the first bomb falls on Baghdad. The second Gulf War is underway. But the first real field of operations was the muffled halls of the United Nations Security Council and embassy conference rooms with, for, the “combatants”, political leaders and diplomats. From August 2002 to March 2003, the prospect of a new war in Iraq sparked an unprecedented diplomatic crisis. Jean-Christophe Rosé and Patrick Jarreau (Washington Bureau Chief for Le Monde) returned to the sites where this first battle played out, and interviewed its main players : affairs ministers, American hawks and advisors, ambassadors to Washington and the UN and weapons inspectors…